The Springboks sloppy performances over the past few weeks have been compounded by the fact they have few alternatives when it comes to squad selection to freshen up the team.
While there may be 42 players in Australia at the moment, the Boks' reliance on their first-choice players over a very taxing period and several bio-bubbles have put them under severe strain and could very well have contributed to their poor performances over the past few weeks.
As my colleague Gavin Rich pointed out, the extensive bio-bubbles are more than any other team in the competition - save for Argentina - have faced and there are real questions about their mental state of freshness going into the biggest tests of the season.
This is no excuse, however, as the Boks have had the schedule for a while now and could easily have altered their side to give some of the fringe players a shot.
But they haven’t and have stuck to the formula of playing all their first-choice players - through design or pressure - and have come unstuck over the past fortnight against Australia.
To put it bluntly, the Boks look listless, they look tired and they look like a shadow of the team that won the Rugby World Cup two years ago.
They are missing the input of Rassie Erasmus, whose remote coaching abilities to link up with Jacques Nienaber are being put in doubt.
And now they arrive at the biggest test of the year - the 100th test against the old foe, the All Blacks and have few options available to them.
There are players on the fringes who could easily have moved in and helped the Boks out over the past few weeks, but other than the first test against Argentina in Port Elizabeth, those players have hardly seen any action this test season.
While the All Blacks have swopped players in and out of their squad, and are likely to return to their full-strength team this week, they also haven’t had the taxing 10-week bubble, the two days off and then another 14-day quarantine.
To play your top players through this all would have seemed like a good option, but it has backfired, and backfired spectacularly on Saturday against the Wallabies.
It produced the worst test performance in years by the World Champions as they looked horribly off their game and were seduced into trying to run the ball, only confirming their own worst fears that they never looked probing at all of the home team’s defence.
SO WHAT NOW FOR THE BOKS?
Nienaber and co sit with a massive poser. Do they freshen up the team by bringing in some fresh legs and take the risk against the All Blacks with players who have not played in weeks? Or do they hope that the mental fatigue is not deadly for two more weeks?
Just how much can they do over the next week in training to help this out?
Unfortunately, there is a sense that there is a clear gulf between the starting line-up and the rest of the squad, and that - whether by design or by accident - there seems to be a mistrust of the fringe players to do the job.
After all, it is worth asking - if they can’t be backed to start the test - what are they doing in the camp in the first place?
The fact that the Boks have struggled against a team that was walloped by the All Blacks and couldn’t cope with the pace of the game over the last two weeks is a massive concern.
But is keeping the same side the answer?
The Boks have spoken out that there isn’t something wrong in the camp, but they can’t escape the truth of the results that have gone against them. The first loss against Australia was because of their own indiscipline. On Saturday, they were much worse, and there were no qualms that the Wallabies were far superior to what they offered on the day.
The Boks will front up against the All Blacks. But will it be enough?
And will the players who were so poor against the Wallabies be the ones who front up and hope to change the fortunes they couldn’t change over the past two weeks?
There are so many questions, and through their own backing of the same team, these questions are now looming large.
The answers will determine just how the Boks fair on Saturday, and whether there is a bigger crisis in the squad or whether this was a mental fatigue-induced setback that can be countered.
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"Unfortunately, there is a sense that there is a clear gulf between the starting line-up and the rest of the squad, and that - whether by design or by accident - there seems to be a mistrust of the fringe players to do the job.
After all, it is worth asking - if they can’t be backed to start the test - what are they doing in the camp in the first place?"
Failure to rotate the players has backfired, having the same players front 2 weeks in a row was dumb.
