"Living has become more joyous, comrades" announced Josef Stalin in November 1935 at the conference of the Stakhanovite Workers.

Well, that might have been true then and it might be true for most people in Seffrica now.

But it is certainly not the case for those of us whose blood pumps groen en goud, who would follow the Springbok rugby team to the ends of earth, who don't think summer's gone just because of an occasional head-butt to the head of a recalcitrant New Zealander.

(And, by the way, sometimes you do need to head-butt an All Black or two, especially an uppity scrum-half - it's the only way of keeping some discipline on the field.)

Here's the hard truth (bring it on with muffled drums and a slow march): the Springbok rugby team, the recently mighty Springbok rugby team, is now a travelling bonus point - for opposition teams.

Need a bonus point? Play the bokke and score all the tries you need.

And I'll tell you what: we're going to get shtupped up the wazoo in Brisbane on Saturday by the vershtunkende kangaroo shaggers - not only because we've never won a match there but also because we're playing like a group of particularly stupid headless chickens at the moment.

How did this come to pass? Well, you will have heard many theories and explanations - most of which are accurate but nearly all of which miss, in my view, the nub of the matter.

Let's go through a few of them.

1. The All Blacks did a little bit of homework and learned how to "spoil" our line-out - how to nullify Bakkies the head-butter and Victor "I love you Pretoria" Matfield.

This is indeed so.

2. Not even the comforting presence of Pieter "Os" du Randt - and on news footage these days, the SABC's camera moves quickly to him, much as it used to move to NR Mandela at political rallies in the old days - not even Os's words of wisdom and the superior weight of Gurthro Steenkamp, John Smit and BJ Botha (or CJ van der Linde) can hide the fact that our scrum is being pushed off its feet by a bunch of laaitjies.

Scrumming is not only about the front three; it's about the tight five and it's also about all eight: they have to work as a unit. Our pack all look as though they just woke up and have hardly met one another before.

3. We are suffering from injuries. For me, the rugby player of the decade is Heinrich Brussow. He's not there. Juan Smith is pretty damn good - better in my view than Ryan Kankowski. (I would play Dewald Potgieter before Kankowski in any case - it's about attitude at the end of the day.) JP Pietersen is not one of my favourites - but he's a whole lot better on the right wing than Jean de Villiers. Enrico Januarie is off-colour but in any case Ruan Pienaar is better and the best scrum-half of all is Fourie du Preez - who is injured.

4. The refs have been biased against us. Yeah, well, the ref in the first Tri-Nations game (his name escapes me - some soutpiel) didn't have much chance against the giant screens around the stadium. They kept showing Bakkies' loving head-butt, which all the "officials" had missed - so the ref was doubly annoyed with himself.

As for Alain Rolland, he's always been a bozo. Never trust an Irishman with a froggie father: imagine someone with John Robbie's self-righteousness and Nicolas Sarkozy as his father. The lack of a citation against Rene Ranger for a shoulder charge on Zane Kirchner was unforgivable unfairness.

But having said all that, don't blame the bloody refs for the way the team is playing - which is exactly what Peter de Villiers is doing and misses the real problem by a country mile.

5. The team got thumped in the first game because of Bakkies' behaviour and in the second because of Danie Roussouw's toe poke ... this is the head boy John Smit's little song and dance ... ag, kak, man.

Yes, I know, given all the cameras there are around now, that one can't go around head-butting folk at that level, but still, don't blame the pusillanimous performance of the team on being without a lock for ten minutes. I'm a little surprised at Smit hiding behind such codswallop.

But let's move on now to the three really serious issues.

1. The New Zealanders - and maybe the Australians too - decided to do a little homework. So they studied the videos and worked hard at the basics - line-outs, scrums and tackling. They also worked hard at one other thing, which we'll come to in point 3 below.

2. What about the Springboks? Nah, they did nothing - partially because they were complacent but mainly because they don't have a coach. There's De Villiers. But he's way out of his depth (we just don't say so because it's impolite - you know why) and he has around him Dickie Muir, not the sharpest pin in the box, and a second-hand car salesman, Gary Glitter. In other words, it's left to Smith and Matfield to run the team.

I haven't read Smit's autobiography, Captain in the Cookie Jar - not enough pictures for me - but I know someone who has and he points out that Smit notes that occasionally De Villiers will make a few "suggestions" on what the chaps ought to do. Now this is of course Smit and his ghost-writer being kind to De Villiers.

What is actually happening between the lines is that De Villiers is just a figurehead with a luxuriant moustache who wanders around among the Springboks. He doesn't, in truth, do much. So when he, Dickie boy, and Glitter actually had to apply their minds to deal with a serious opposition ...well, kyk hoe lyk ons nou.

3. But the real issue, it seems to me - and I'm surprised that even people like Nasty Booter (Naas Botha) have made no mention of it - the real issue is that the All Blacks did a really simple thing. No nuclear physics. No quantum mechanics.

They did just this: they stopped kicking the ball away. Did you not notice? They were running the ball from inside their own twenty-five - not because of some new-found "confidence" but because Graham Henry et al figured out that, mirabile dictu, if you keep the ball in hand, you can score tries and win the game.

What do we do? Well, pretty boy Morne Steyn kicks up-and-under after up-and-under ad nauseam and, when he kicks for touch, he doesn't even put it out. So the All Blacks take the ball over and over again - and we get whipped.

All Steyn had to do was to stop kicking and to get his backs away. But his pack was going backwards and Steyn was lost. Butch James is the man you put on to face a team like the present All Blacks.

Oh well, with a bit of luck, I have everything wrong - and we'll win on Saturday. But don't hold your breath.

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter