One of them had two old Dutch flags wrapped around his back . . . there were quite a few of them in the ground.

"What did you make of that" I said. I got the apartheid-Zulu anthology of South African rugby woes for the next five minutes.

He wasn't happy.

"To come all this way to be humiliated."

"Yep" "I tell you . . . it will be the longest trip home ever."

"When's your flight?"

"Flight . . . no mate, I live in Dundrum."

The Boks were awful. But don't get carried away, if we had left our top six players . . . O'Connell, Leamy, Wallace, O'Gara, D'Arcy and O'Driscoll . . . out they would have beaten us. Or maybe if the two teams had swapped coaches the match would have been a good deal closer.

As it was 32-15 really doesn't bear out the difference in quality between the two sides.

Officially or unofficially there must be five coloured players in the match 22. They are the rules and Jake White has to work around them and get on with it. Four started. The difference in quality was staggering . . .

Bryan Habana, even though out of position, showed us he was world class.

Bevin Fortuin was the worst full back I've seen play at international level in a decade. The new Blanco, they said . . .

was that Billy Blanco, first reserve for Ireland's shinty team? The only resemblance that he would have with Serge was the girth. Fortuin wasn't fit enough to play at this level. I watched the video again and again . . . he was out of breath, out of position, out of his depth and Jake White must have been out of his mind to pick him. If your team is only as strong as your weakest link then the Springboks are in real trouble.

Lawrence Sephaka was tailing off after 25 minutes . . . you could see profuse beads of sweat running down his brow after 10 minutes. They had no option but to call him ashore at half-time. Strange to see, irrespective of background etc, two players so badly out of condition.

I couldn't really understand what the Springboks were trying to do either from set phase or from the six or seven quality recycles that they got going forward. 'Bosh' rugby, as the English are finding out, is very 2003. The Bok pack had some close in line-outs down at the Havelock Square end with about 10 minutes to go in the first half. Height doesn't necessarily equate to power or intensity. They didn't have the craft, guile or innate intelligence to work their way over from favourable positions, either from the scrum or maul.

They couldn't drive a Fine Gael councillor home with their sorties off the line-out.

If you match them for muscle the game is over. It is rare that an Irish pack can dictate physically to any SANZA side but they did so with total disregard for reputation. A little microcosm of this happened to be the best moment in the match. In the modern game, ball won on the deck doesn't necessarily mean that you can't compete for it. The term counter-rucking seems to have become fashionable. It's something the Irish team have only worked this season, they didn't do it last year. It's also particularly effective against sides that commit only three or four players to the breakdown.

In the 51st minute, the Boks had a scrum. Ricky Januarie threw a pass to Jean deVilliers who was put to ground by Chilliboy O'Driscoll who wrapped him, stood up and stood over him to compete for the pill. The ball wasn't coming back anytime soon. Januarie came to the breakdown, reckoned he had the ball, looked up to assess his options . . . the Boks had got over the gain-line but the ball was so slow that a box kick was the best percentage play.

They didn't even get that. Neil Best and Shane Horgan did a pincer hit and barrelled the Boks off onto the other side of the ruck. Denis Leamy came in, picked the ball up and fed it outside.

Normally you run a high chance of getting pinged for that, but it was done