Our resident oney eyed Cantab, Phooey runs his rule over the first Tri Nations game, between the Wobblies and the Steroid Brutes.

Australia were never going to win that game. Reminded me a bit of the Welsh and Irish of the 90s, lots of passion and committed defence but the old lie that defence wins matches was blown out of the water. I turned to Toots with 25-30 minutes to go and told him that I didn't think the wobblers had it in them to score again (they really needed one more try while they had some momentum) but that SA would and it would be a case of could they hold out on the beach-head fighting a rearguard action. The answer was no. The Boks squeaked it and once again proved that winning ugly beats losing pretty hands down.

And despite all the people talking about how close it was (and some saying that SA were outplayed for 70 minutes...) we shouldn't be talking about Steyn's drop goals because if the Boks had had a proper captain on the field they would have taken the points on offer from the penalties instead of playing big swing dicks and going for the tries. Smit is a lot more important to the Boks than I previously thought with the evidence of the leadership vacuum in his absence.

The wobblies were shattered at the end, not just from their physical exertions but also because they probably realised that they'd almost got away with a burglary which would have been a bit of an emotional rescue as they continue their woeful away results, if not performances. It must be hell when you're down in the hole and even lady luck seems to be dumping on you. Don't know if the loss can galvanise them for the next 6 months or if we saw their RWC slipping away. I thought their biggest mistake was picking Tuquiri and Mitchell, I couldn't decide which one was the worst, they were woeful.

Toots and I also disagreed on Burger. I thought he was crap and one dimensional with the ball in hand but Toots didn't think he was bad at all, strangely enough for the same reason. I didn't think he offered much with the ball in hand, merely ran hard at the nearest yellow shirt, didn't look to pass or link up or even get the ball away in the tackle, just went to ground and a few times died with it. Toots thought that was good because it meant he committed the tackler and they couldn't drift off because they knew someone was going to have to tackle him, but against a defence that wasn't missing many tackles to me his tactics were fairly dull and ineffective but that seems to have got some people's rocks off.

The audible relief from my Boer mates in the bar matches the release of tension at the stadium we saw on TV in the crowd, fuck were they happy. That was a heartening thing for me. Before the game I had mixed emotions, I didn't want a wobbly win, but I did want the high flying Bok' confidence to take a bit of a dent with a close game, and that's what I got. We also saw that if you take away the Bok scrum as a way of getting the pack into the game, you take a huge edge off them (much the same as the Bulls) and that has to be a worry for anyone in the republic because they're not going to get their usual supply of front foot ball against NZ or France. I wonder if yesterday's papers are a little less euphoric now that perhaps they've re-examined the game

Also they're going to have to find someone at 2nd 5 with a bit more in the way of distribution skills than dV or they're going to have to revert to 10 man rugby and intercepts to get their field position. Maybe you gotta move Butch one out and slip Steyn in? But that would expose Bitch's dodgy tackling technique maybe a little too much. And do you trust Steyn's god to move him into the right place to take on Jerry Collins and Richie McCaw? It seems you have to fit the young bloke into your jig saw puzzle somewhere, but fuck knows how you do that at the moment, is he a luxury you can afford?

I am quite surprised that we're playing at sea level and the All Blacks haven't been shunted straight up to the veldt like we normally seem to be. But I see they did have to fly into Jo'b before making the connection to Durban. And it's nice to see that our locks have taken our advice to stop breaking down, even with the long journey.