RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP: Tense fortnight ahead as a bonus point could decide it
Rugby
The final fortnight of the most exciting ever Castle Lager Rugby Championship has arrived, and as a measure of how unpredictable it all is, those Springbok supporters who hope that the Wallabies win in Auckland on Saturday might well be backing the wrong horse in their assumption of what their team needs.In normal years an Australian win would help the Boks. The All Blacks have dominated the competition down the years, while it is now well over two decades since the Wallabies have had a hand on the Bledisloe Cup, which is played for by the two Trans-Tasman rivals.
But a glance at the Championship standings with two games to play, with all teams having won two and lost two of the games played so far, shows the potential folly of thinking a win for Australia to break a 31-year Kiwi sequence of success at Eden Park will help the Boks. It could do the exact opposite, for it is only the Wallabies who can force a situation where the South African fate is not in their own hands.
The losing bonus point that the Wallabies grabbed with their late try in the defeat against Argentina in Sydney puts them one point ahead of the Boks and All Blacks, with the Boks holding down second because of superior points difference.
That means that technically the Wallabies are the one team in the competition who have their fate in their hands - in the sense that if they win their two remaining matches the other teams are going to have to pick up at least one bonus point victory to match them.
No team is out of it. Argentina have beaten both New Zealand and Australia once, and if they replicate that against the Boks, they will be right in the mix even though they start this last sequence of games in last place.
Much will depend on how the All Blacks recover from their record savaging at the hands of the Boks. The reaction in New Zealand to that defeat has been predictable - in the sense that the criticism has rained down on coach Scott ‘Razor’ Robertson and his charges.
FIFTH-ROUND RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP FIXTURES
New Zealand v Australia (Eden Park, Auckland, Saturday 7:05am)
South Africa v Argentina (Hollywoodbets Kings Park, Durban, Saturday 5:10pm)
STANDINGS (after four games)
Australia 11, South Africa 10, New Zealand 10, Argentina 9.
– SuperSport.com/rugby