The Springboks customarily receive a flurry of questions from Australian media, and a warm welcome from South African expats, when landing in Sydney.  Not so much yesterday, when they arrived at around 8pm local time to be greeted by green and gold wearing… crickets.  “Where is everybody?” joked captain John Smit.

The rescheduling of the Boks’ Qantas flight to Australia, and the Wallabies’ upset loss to the world’s tenth-ranked side Samoa (who beat the hosts 32-23 in their Tri-Nations opener yesterday), are both likely to have had something to do with the complete absence of ceremony or local media at the airport when the South Africans arrived.  Although John hazarded another guess as to the reason.

“I guess they are not expecting too much from us [in the Tri-Nations] but for the life of me I don’t know why.  But I reckon we can be assured that this loss to Samoa we have just heard about is going to shake things up a bit this week,” he told South African media.

The Springboks start their away leg of the 2011 Tri-Nations tournament against Australia this Saturday.

[Source: IOL]