KEY POINTS:
In modern times there has been the odd maverick Springbok coach who has tried to reinvent the South African rugby wheel.
Nick Mallett, in the latter stages of his tenure, grew besotted with the playing style of the Brumbies but when he tried to implement it, he found the shells did not fit the cannons, and he gave it up in despair.
Harry Viljoen, the eccentric business tycoon-turned-rugby coach, had another crack at the Aussie way.
He famously ordered first five-eighths Percy Montgomery to not kick the ball - not even once - for the first half of a test against Argentina. He also hired Aussie coaches Tim Lane and Les Kiss.
Again the experiment went up in smoke.
Jake White has no such fixation with all things Aussie.
He's hired Eddie Jones, of course, but the pair are very much agreed that Jones' job is to dab a bit of creativity on to the Springbok canvas, not to overhaul it.
"I guess you can say I am a pragmatist," says White. "You take the cloth you have been given and you cut your coat accordingly. There is a reason the Springboks have played a certain way for the last 100 years. At the international level of the game, you play the cards you have been dealt. If future coaches are dealt a different set of cards, well then it is a different story, obviously."
Metaphors aside, White is saying, quite simply, that there will be no surprises from the Springboks in France.
"If we had athletes like [Dan] Carter, [Sitiveni] Sivivatu and [Joe] Rokocoko then we might play like the All Blacks, but we don't and that's okay - we have different but no less effective players."
That is open to debate, but White reckons there is little between full strength Springbok and All Black teams.
He will point out that the difference between the teams when New Zealand won in Durban in July was the superior fitness of the All Blacks in the final, telling quarter and the impact of the Kiwi bench in that same period.
He will say that his players have now caught up on fitness (they did their conditioning programme during the second half of the Tri-Nations) and that the seven first-choice players missing because of injury from that Durban test will make up for the difference in quality of the benches.
"I think the way we played to beat Australia in the Tri-Nations test in Cape Town is close to a blueprint for our World Cup campaign," White says.
"The power play of our forwards in the first half was awesome and we would hope that our finishing in the World Cup will be better than it was that day. Then, in the second half of that match, our bench made a huge impact and ultimately gave us the impetus that took us to the win."
The 19-year-old Frans Steyn, on as a substitute wing, kicked two late drop goals to win the match. It's significant that White believes this type of impact is the difference between winning and losing World Cups.
"If you look at World Cup history, there is a trend when it comes to what is successful: drop goals, experience and a faultless passage through the pool games."
The Boks have drop-goal experts in Steyn, Ruan Pienaar and Andre Pretorius, all of whom are set at this stage to play off the bench.
White has more or less stuck with the same group of players since 2004.
Going through the pool games undefeated? Samoa, Tonga and the US should be accounted for but in round two there is a colossal encounter with improving England.
It will be an especially bone-jarring clash because England have made it clear they are adopting the same forward-based game as the Boks.
On the subject of Pienaar, White believes he has developed a late trump card. The lanky Sharks halfback has emerged as a dangerous first-five, much in the mould of Stephen Larkham.
His second-half introduction is likely to add a dangerous arrow to the Boks' quiver.
"We are accused of being one-dimensional, and maybe we are," says White. "But when we are accurate in our execution of what we do, we are difficult to beat."
