When the Springboks returned this week to stories painting them as a team in disarray and at odds with one another over game-plan, it was a picture that was remarkably different to the one many would have anticipated just four weeks ago.
On the eve of the Tri-Nations kickoff against New Zealand in Auckland, Bok coach Peter de Villiers was asked by a radio presenter if there was anywhere the All Blacks could match the Springboks. De Villiers responded that "maybe they can match us with guts, but they cannot match us with talent".
Those words came back to haunt South Africa. It wasn't that they lost the three matches in Australasia that was most disturbing - although the recent Super 14 results suggest that shouldn't be happening - but the way they lost.
There have been the predictable responses this week from top administrators, but it is understood that as often is the case, the public message that is being put out does not necessarily reflect what is going on behind the scenes.
The decision-makers cannot do anything other at this point than put out the predictable messages - "We back the coach, we have faith, we can turn it around, this is a good team, it's a happy team blah blah blah".
The Boks are in the middle of a Tri-Nations campaign and there isn't any question of them sacking their coach now. But this week there has been enough anger expressed in private by top ranking administrators who are now getting to the point where they feel enough is enough and who at far too frequent intervals during De Villiers' tenure have had to waste energy putting out fires.
The Springboks have the luxury of playing all their matches of the home leg on the Highveld. It won't be enough to retain them their Tri-Nations trophy, and given the edge they always have at altitude against teams like Australia, it's also probably true that whatever transpires, it won't tell us much about the Bok chances of arriving at a game-plan or selection mix that can win the 2011 World Cup.
But what home victories can do is change the mood, and they have been known to save more than one struggling Springbok coach in the past.
But failure for the Boks to respond to the challenge facing them, and more defeats at home like the ones they suffered overseas, could force the SA Rugby administrators to do what many of them probably privately think they should do anyway - which is to sack the coach.
Even if the Boks were to win their remaining three matches of this year's Tri-Nations, it appears that De Villiers can anticipate some kind of intervention from the administration. There is wide agreement that given how badly the Boks have been exposed, if De Villiers wants to carry on coaching the Boks, he is going to have to humble himself by admitting to his lack of experience and accepting outside help.
Whether it will be in the form of a technical adviser to be appointed alongside him, or above him, or the more informal arrangement that was forced on his predecessor Jake White a few years ago, when he was told to take advice from former Bok coaches, only time will tell.
But De Villiers has rubbed many people within rugby up the wrong way recently, and there is a widespread antipathy towards his perceived arrogance. So humility is going to have to be key to his approach. For instance, if he is told to tap into the Stormers' vast reservoir of knowledge he may encounter opposition following his crude attack on the franchise before the France Test in Cape Town, where he accused them of overplaying their Springboks.
Whatever the bosses decide, they cannot adopt the attitude that it has only been over the past few weeks in Australasia that the wheels started to come off for the Boks. A more honest appraisal will show that the success story of the Bok class of 2007 came to a grinding halt when the final whistle sounded on the 2009 Tri-Nations campaign.
The time-line they should be looking at is one that started when the end hooter sounded in Hamilton last September, and maybe even the defeat to Australia in Brisbane the week before that. It was then that Robbie Deans claimed that the secret to beating the Boks had been uncovered, and against top opposition they have struggled ever since.
As reflected below, the time-line of the past 10 months reads like one that, had it belonged to the Titanic, would surely have prevented the great ship leaving port for its ill-fated maiden voyage.