After the foggy glib that was last year’s Super final in Christchurch, this year’s Super 14 showdown saw a marked contrast in sunny Durban with a thrilling game that went down to the wire. Two highly passionate and committed teams in the Bulls and Sharks proved these South African franchises deserved to be in the top two.

Bryan Habana’s desperate last-minute effort to score (more or less) under the posts was the difference for the Bulls. His ability to create magic out of nothing hammered the final nail in the coffin for the perhaps premature celebrations of the Sharks and their home-ground fans.

So what to make from this point? With the end of the Super 14 for 2007, the rugby world now stands on the verge of guesswork, predictions and bets, edging towards a tournament that has been on the lips of every coach, player and aficionado since Clive Woodward’s England held up the silverware nearly four years ago. Whispering has turned into statement. South Africa will be the team World Cup favourites New Zealand fear most come September.

Quite rightly, any critic would ignore South Africa at their peril. The SA franchises have played exceptionally this season and in the last two years as a collective. Springbok rugby has been the only consistent threat to Graham Henry’s All Blacks, and the only team in the world to usurp Henry’s regime in the last couple of years (albeit if this has only been on home soil in Cape Town 2005 and Rustenburg 2006).

In this year’s Super 14 and with 22 of the top New Zealand rugby players out for the first half of the season due to Henry’s controversial conditioning programme, the SA franchises were able to capitalise on NZ sides stripped of their star players by putting away key wins. The Bulls and Sharks, in particular, even managed to tally up a respectable amount of away wins which went against the grain of their normally erratic away match records of the past - indicating growth in consistency and maturity is taking form across South African rugby.

So South Africa has finally won a Super 14 title. No doubt, on home ground the Springboks will (probably) beat and gain confidence from an under-strength England side who have been battered severely through bad administration and petty in-fighting at club level. With the Tri Nations around the corner the Springboks now have a chance to stake a claim they are peaking at just the right moment to blitz the world apart come the World Cup.

With stars like Schalk Burger, Victor Matfield and the dashing Bryan Habana plus new talent waiting in the wings (such as the precocious Francois Steyn, 20 this year and a certain matchwinner of the future who can assassinate a team with his Jonny Wilkinson-esque drop goals from anywhere on the pitch), the World Cup could be theirs for the taking.

Or can it? One of the main questions hanging over this Bok team is whether Jake White can ever lead them to play consistently in Europe. With the usual controversial selection dramas that all too often seem to plague the Springbok resolve with White at the helm, it will be interesting to observe whether these obstacles can be overcome. White’s history would perhaps indicate not.

In the meantime, while pundits and armchair experts quiver in fear of a rejuvenated SA outfit, it would also pay not to forget some other shots at good money in the build-up to the world’s best tournament. England will be proud and Australia their usual potent selves. But the real threat will be in the unpredictable French on their home strip, or the gallant Irish side led by Brian O’Driscoll and Paul O’Connell.

These teams with their broken play and flashes of team and individual brilliance are probably more likely to create the major upsets compared to the structured, sometimes dull, forward-dominated 10-man rugby South Africa often prefer to play. It may be South Africa's year. But it probably isn't.

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