adminLONDON. — Springboks coach Heyneke Meyer pretty much summed up the no win situation he is in going into tonight’s bronze medal play-off match against Argentina at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park when he described it as being akin to kissing your sister.
In other words there is no real excitement in it, if anything it just feels damn weird to be playing it at all as there is nothing to gain from it as the main goal of the four-year cycle effectively died at Twickenham last Saturday evening.
Those who have coached teams for the consolation play-off game at previous World Cups have described it as a difficult week where there is much more to lose than there is to gain.
Meyer would be right if he goes into the match feeling he has a lot more to lose than gain.
A win won’t gain Meyer a great deal.
A defeat though will be meaningful — in all the wrong ways.
It would mean a second loss to Argentina in the space of just a few months, it would mean a less than 50% win percentage from the year, which is unheard of for the Boks, and it will probably just be enough to persuade those decision makers who might be sitting on the fence that his race is now run and someone new should take over.
So the stakes are still high for the coach, in the sense that defeat will be greeted as another in a series of disasters stretching back through the Japan game to the Durban defeat.
It is why he has chosen a full strength side for a game which does fortunately have some individual meaning for a clutch of legendary players who will be making this their last hurrah in the green and gold jumper.
Schalk Burger says he’s undecided, but hinted quite strongly that the Olympic Park game will be his swansong as an international player.
For Victor Matfield this definitely is time to say goodbye, and he’s said as much, and the man who captained the side last week, Fourie du Preez, made it known then that he’d played his last game as he knew injury would keep him from playing against the Pumas.
It is also debatable whether Bryan Habana will be back for more after this.
Du Preez won’t be on the field but the game does bring the curtain down on the era that he, Habana, the injured Jean de Villiers, Burger, Matfield and company shared in.
Burger was probably right when he said earlier in the week that perhaps the group of players weren’t always part of Bok campaigns that did justice to the talent, but starting with the beginning of the Jake White era in 2004, they did win two Tri-Nations, a World Cup and a series against the British and Irish Lions. — SuperSport.
Online Reporter