But referees have eyes too, sometimes in the backs of their heads, and when Paddy O'Brien spotted Burger spiriting away some possession on the floor shortly before half-time, he packed him off to the cooler for 10 minutes of penance. During his absence, Henson scored the first of his tries, and Stephen Jones contributed eight points with the boot.Fourteen-man rugby is difficult at the best of times, but there is something about the balance of the Tri-Nations champions' back row that leaves them especially vulnerable when the sin bin comes into play. Burger's partners, Juan Smith and Joe van Niekerk, are no slouches; indeed, Van Niekerk is as good as any back-rower in the world when he carries the ball into the exposed areas of an opposition defence. But they are not at their best on the floor, amid the boots and bullets. If Johnny O'Connor, that wriggling ferret of a flanker, gets stuck into the Boks in Dublin on Saturday, there could be fun and games.John Smit, the Springbok captain, said afterwards that this problem on the deck would be addressed as a matter of urgency "It's a question of accuracy," he said.

I made the substitutions because I couldn't see how Wales had enough time to get themselves back into it. It was only when the words 'eight minutes' came into my earpiece from the referee that I realised what was happening, that the clock was running on through the stoppages. I won't get caught like that again." Not even this weekend in Ireland, where time can move in very mysterious ways? "Don't tell me that," groaned the coach.Wales scored no fewer than 27 of their points while Burger was off the field, which says something about the influence this wonderful Western Province flanker has on a game. It used to be said that blond loose forwards had an unfair advantage over their less striking brethren, on the basis that selectors tended to notice them more quickly and more often. "In South Africa, the clocks stop when the play stops, so they always show the amount of game time left in the match I assumed that was the case here. And a short while after that? Humiliation in a major key in the shape of a pushover try, fittingly completed by a red-hot scrum-half from Scarlets country, Dwayne Peel."I think I put myself under some pressure out there," admitted White. Within seconds, the Bokke pack were being sacked by their Welsh opponents and Gavin Henson was sliding in at the right corner for his second try of the afternoon.

For reasons best known to himself, a coach as sharp as Jake White could not get his head around the fairly basic principle of an 80-minute match, followed by injury time. This was not a proposition from Wittgenstein, as Basil Fawlty would have pointed out, but it was entirely beyond Springbok reasoning and it very nearly cost them the Grand Slam they crave with a passion. The tourists were 38-22 ahead when, after 78 minutes, White withdrew the medium-sized South African province known as Os du Randt from his front row, and summoned the blond battering ram Schalk Burger from the field for good measure. In their stead, he sent on a couple of rookies, one of them to play out of position as a makeshift loose-head prop. It was not the Joneses who caused the confusion, although there were enough of the blighters to leave this bewitching South African side profoundly bothered and almost terminally bewildered It was the clock that did it. It's a bit comical but we have made an official issue of it with the referee It's not in the spirit of rugby."Perhaps not. But it was well within the scope of the International Rugby Board's laws 1.2 (a) and (b), which stipulate only a maximum width for a pitch, 70m, and no minimum measurement.

According to a spokesman for the Scottish Rugby Union, the sidelines were adjusted to accustom the home side to the less expansive football surfaces they will be treading against Japan at McDiarmid Park in Perth this Saturday and against Australia at Hampden a week later.If nothing else, putting the squeeze on Jones was another sign of progress for Scotland and their Australian coach, Matt Williams, given that the head Wallaby usually reserves his verbal sniping for the big hitters of world rugby.Williams has a long way to go before he can get his team anywhere near to the major playing nations, although in Hugo Southwell and Sean Lamont he looks to have found the kind of potent attackers Scotland have sorely lacked in recent times. It might have been different if the tourists had kept spreading their wings for the whole 80 minutes but Jones was in full whingeing Wallaby mode after the final whistle."Considering we were playing on an under-16s pitch, we're pretty happy with our game," he said, sardonically. "I know the width was five metres short because I measured it. There was a fourth try, for Lote Tuqiri, and there might have been a fifth for Steve Larkham without some questionable video analysis.As it was, the Wallabies went into mental walkabout for the second half and a raw Scottish side, weakened by injuries and Zurich Premiership commitments, followed their 28-0 first half deficit with a morale-lifting 14-3 second-half "victory". Rathbone captained South Africa to the Under-21 World Cup three years ago, in which they beat Australia in the Johannesburg final, before joining the Brumbies and, courtesy of his grandmother's roots, becoming an Aussie.Rathbone's break through the middle set up the opening try for Stirling Mortlock and it was his high-speed finishing which secured the second and third scores, albeit after some wonderfully slick midfield manoeuvring by his colleagues, not least the outstanding Mortlock and the flanker George Smith.

Murrayfield was nowhere near narrow enough to contain the 23-year-old Durban native. He ran in a hat-trick of tries in the Wallabies' 51-15 walloping of the world champions. The bullocking Rathbone was two-thirds of the way to another hat-trick on Saturday when he made his departure, 14 minutes into the second-half, with a badly-bloodied left hand. For all the fuss Eddie Jones took characteristically impish delight in making about the narrowing of the Murrayfield playing surface from 70 metres to 65, the most acute concern for the Wallaby coach as he left the ground was Rathbone's health.In the immediate aftermath, Jones feared that Rathbone might have severed an artery or suffered a fracture "We might have to fly over a replacement," he lamented. By the time the Wallabies flew from Edinburgh to Paris yesterday, however, Rathbone had been patched up with seven stitches and medically cleared for the remaining three matches of Australia's European tour.On the strength of Rathbone's rampant first-half in Edinburgh, that is seriously bad news for France, who face the Wallabies in Paris on Saturday, for Scotland, who confront them again at Hampden Park a week later, and for England, who have a Twickenham date with them on 27 November. However, just as he jogged back on to the field, a break from the Blues set up a great position for the home side and Dean Dewdney squeezed over in the corner.Cardiff Blues: Try D Dewdney; Penalties L Thomas 3.