Jean de Villiers
This coming weekend’s trip to Twickenham will determine whether Saturday’s unexpected defeat to Ireland was just a small bump for the Springboks on their rise to the top of world rugby, or whether it was a significant setback to the progress that has been made by Heyneke Meyer’s team since 2012.
The England game was always going to be the one that would define the four-match tour. As the 2010 team discovered, when they suffered the ignominy of losing to Scotland but still returned home as heroes because they beat England in the last game. If you win at Twickenham your tour is seen as a success.
But after the Dublin defeat there is a lot more on the line than just passing this immediate examination. The work they have done and the progress they have made through the entire year is now at stake, with the words of skipper Jean de Villiers ahead of the tour during a training session in Stellenbosch sure to be repeated in the build-up week: “This tour will decide if we’ve had a good year or not.”
SuperSport
So far it has been, certainly by third year in the World Cup cycle standards, in that although the Boks never won the Castle Lager Rugby Championship, they did tick the box that needed ticking by beating New Zealand. In the home leg of the Championship, they also employed a style of rugby that had opponents marveling at the growth in their game.
That may have been part of the problem in Dublin though, for the players employed in key positions to drive a high intensity, up-tempo game in dry conditions may not be the right ones for the northern hemisphere, and two of the three big international matches played on the same day suggested that the world’s No 1 team, the All Blacks, may have learned what Heyneke Meyer’s team has forgotten since last they were north of the equator.
Up until Dublin the Boks enjoyed a superior record to the Kiwis in the north since Meyer took over as coach, chiefly because their style of play was better suited to the northern requirements. But in beating England at Twickenham with a second-half performance that relied on grunt and good tactical kicking, the All Blacks confirmed that they do have the ability to change their style and win ugly when they need to.
It might be premature to suggest the Boks have forgotten how to do that, but the Aviva Stadium match was an occasion when they should have been looking to slow it down and to kick, both for position and for posts, more than they did. The Boks had a marked dominance in first phase and should have been able to squeeze the passion out of the Irish by just suffocating them and closing them down.
Instead everything was a bit too rushed, and sadly for the Boks the big fear in the week before the tour was realised – the loss to injury of Ruan Pienaar was a massive blow. Francois Hougaard rightly earned rave reviews in the dry weather games back home but Dublin confirmed why Meyer considers him only the third choice scrumhalf behind Fourie du Preez and Pienaar – and on this evidence he is a distant third.
The way the game is played in the north is different to the south, and watching Hougaard getting caught in possession and harried around the fringes brought home why the Ulster-based Pienaar has what many consider to be an irritating habit when he steps back from the ruck and appears to set himself before passing the ball. Maybe he just knows something, which is that you can’t just go in and play straight from the loose scrum over there as you end up with hands all over you.
It was Pienaar’s kicking game that was missed most of all, and with the Irish defensive system and line speed cleverly devised to cut down the time and space allowed to Handre Pollard, the Bok backs were always under intense pressure.
The problem for the Boks of course is that Cobus Reinach, the immediate back-up scrumhalf, is set in the same mould as Hougaard, so there is no immediate solution to the problem ahead of Twickenham apart possibly from reintroducing Patrick Lambie’s better tactical kicking skills. The Sharks pivot does at least boast experience of winning with the Boks in the north after wearing the No 10 on the 2012 tour.
What should be gone by the England game though is the rust, which turned out to be another pre-match fear that was confirmed and which contributed to the defeat by robbing the Boks of the clinical edge that defines champion teams.
The Boks had spent considerable time on the training field subsequent to their epic win over the All Blacks last time out, but five weeks was a long period to be away from the playing field, particularly when the next match was against a team that is effectively the reigning northern hemisphere champion outfit.
The decision to take the Boks out of the Currie Cup should not be criticised for it was geared towards a long term benefit that maybe will be seen if the contracted players arrive at the start of next year in better condition than has been the case at the start of some World Cup years. And the benefits of the time on the training field and the rest period could have immediate pay-off this coming weekend now that the rust has been shaken off.
But, while the Boks only spent time on the training field in the intervening period since Ellis Park, the All Blacks had played twice –against Australia in the final Bledisloe Cup game and against the United States – and ditto Australia (Bledisloe and Barbarians). That might go some way to explaining why those two teams, although they struggled, managed to get across the line, and the Boks didn’t.
If the Boks win on Saturday, and thus confirm Dublin as a one-off blip, which it should be because after all they did win against the world champions in their previous game, the calculated risk would still have been worth it, even though the South Africans surrendered their unbeaten record in the north. They are, though, now under massive pressure to win.
Read this dig at the Supersport crew
There was none of the composure that marked their previous visit to the Aviva Stadium in 2012. That squad was vastly inferior to this one but undoubtedly better coached and ground out an ugly win against a determined opponent. But it appears ugly won’t do for Meyer anymore. Having had a long and close professional relationship with him, I know that he was very aware of widespread criticism of his game plan in the first two years of his reign. He now appears to have bowed to the public pressure to play beautifully.
So he has performed some plastic surgery to the game plan, but it’s a botched job in which he has inadvertently created something horrendous, something boasting neither balance nor symmetry. It appeals only to those with a warped concept of what is beautiful and attractive. It’s a porn star with up-sized breasts, inflated lips, cheap hair extensions and a botox-filled face. It should and can be Eva Mendez – just the right balance between solid wife material and sexy seductress.
Part of Meyer’s problem is that he has acquired a ballistic missile in Handré Pollard. Knowing when to engage his destructive potential is the key to Pollard’s potency. At present it appears the kid has an inflexible directive to attack the gainline or seek to create for others for the majority of the time he touches the ball. However, just because you have a ballistic missile doesn’t mean you have to exploit the limit of its capacity. There’s something to be said for subtly, a quality the Springboks desperately lack at present.
I laughed at those who had called for the Springboks to play more expansively and then criticised them mercilessly on Saturday for losing while trying to play in that fashion. The chief culprits are some of SuperSport’s commentators and analysts. These men, as key opinion shapers in South African rugby, have for some time been peddling the rhetoric that the Springboks would be better off running the ball on most occasions and weaving in an element of entertainment to their play in the process. Their standing in South Africa means their views are accepted as gospel, and they have contributed significantly to the miseducation of the nation. Certainly there has to be a balance, but you have to earn the right to play wide through line-depleting phase play or a strong contest at the breakdown that would allow you to turnover ball and attack an unset defensive line. The Springboks never earned that right in Dublin.
World Cup-winning coach Clive Woodward believes England need more grunt in their game. ‘We have to circle the wagons, get some sulphur flying around, add some real anger into this team and concentrate on playing ruthless world-class rugby. Winning the next match is all that matters’.
Woodward expects a Bok backlash this week. ‘This week is going to be one of the toughest of Stuart Lancaster’s career. The Boks will be up for it physically more than ever, so England must look to out-think and out-smart them and that needs great coaching and great selecting’. Woodward feels Danny Cipriani should start at No 10 and Owen Farrell at 12 to give England more tactical-kicking options.
former England playmaker Stuart Barnes laments the team’s inability to build on a good start against the All Blacks. Barnes also criticises Farrell’s tactical kicking and says ‘packs do not win matches if backs cannot put them in the right position’.
All written here can be said about SA Too
Cleary observes: ‘Perhaps this is the real England, incomplete, maddeningly inconsistent on this showing, capable but not commanding. Test rugby is not about flashes of brilliance, it is about sustained excellence’. He also notes that the Boks will be keen to prove a point after their own failure at the Aviva Stadium. ‘The Springboks will be beasting themselves over the next few days after the horrors of Dublin. There will be no talk of positives in their defeat’.
‘England sunk by inability to think quickly under attack’ reads the headline in today’s Guardian. A smaller piece by Dean Ryan is titled ‘Home side lose sight of basics and pressure is now on’.
‘England needed three wins this autumn to show they are moving in the right direction,’ Ryan writes. ‘Two was just about the pass mark, but after the goings-on in Dublin on Saturday, England have to nail the Boks and to do otherwise would suddenly make Australia, and even Samoa, potential banana skins’.
Al wat ek kan se oor laas Saterdag. Bokke het lekker opgevlok en 20 minute voor die eindfluitjie het ek geweet ons is moertoe. SWAK swak vertoning.
Nou is ons gelukkig in n posisie waar HM se beste uitkom. Ons is met die rug teen die muur.
Lekker week sal weer later rugby kom loer.
Week vol werk wag vir my.
1x> @ superBul:
Excellent article, i couldnt agree more, we always hear people comaining about “its not how if you win or lose its how you play” what a bunch of toss, those were the most vocal ones after this loss. as jou glas half leeg is sal jy seker maak hy sal so bly.
@ superBul:
Aside from Nick and Ashwin having a decent go at each other in studio, I also noticed that Nick totally disagreed with Bob Skinstad about the yellow card.
What I’m interested in seeing this weekend, is whether this loss fires up the Boks, or demotivates them. I hope it’s the former!
Some good news to GBS and a couple of Bulls’ supporters !!
http://www.sport24.co.za/Rugby/Jono-Ross-leaves-Bulls-20141111
@ GoBokkeAndIreland:
Well Skinstad said that the player that was played in the air, had his one foot on the ground….utter BS by Skinstad.
Jonathan Kaplan made a valid point about the yellow card of Strauss. Early during the match Willie Le Roux was also played in the air after having caught the ball. Poite decided to stick to the original free-kick. According to Kaplan the same logic should have been applied to the Strauss incident. I tend to agree with Kaplan.
@ charlesm:
I was also wondering if my tv was a bit slow, as his foot didn’t look on the ground in the footage I saw . . .
I think that comment by Kaplan enforces the argument for consistency among refereeing decisions. What do you think of a challenge system, for the captains/teams to officially query a ref decision?
Strauss should not be tackling players while they are in the air. He never even attempted to catch the ball.
@ charlesm:
It was only a matter of time, no matter how much “character” You have it is a crappy life to live where almost everyone hates your guts. the likes that ended Jorrie Mullers career, temporarily halted Percy and even Slapchips. And it had to pregressively get worse and worse as the year went on… I have mixed feelings about this. Relieved that he is going, but irritated with Ludeke for letting the situation completely get out of hand by selecting him in the wrong positions.
@ GoBokkeAndIreland:
In principle I like the idea of a challenge system but I guess issues that need to be addressed are:
How many per match will be allowed ?
Who will be the judge of the (original) decision ? If you think about the yellow of Coles: the TMO recommended a penalty only but Owens insisted on the yellow and eventually the TMO budged. If the referee’s decision is questioned, surely then he can’t be
“allowed” to decide about a challenge ? That is how I see it
MacroBok wrote:
I can’t argue with that.
You make a valid point about Ludeke’s selections
I would rather have an ugly win than a beautiful loss. Horses for courses, and also game plans can and need to change.
8 @ charlesm:
Oh thank goodness, for small mercies… this rainy day just turned very, very bright and beautiful!
Heeeeeeeeeeee haaaaaaaaaaaa!
Wat drink ons… I mean one has to celebrate great news like that!
7 @ GoBokkeAndIreland:
(Fore)Skinstad has shown in the past to be totally ignorant of the rules.
He’s a prat of the highest order who makes calls based purely on his personal opinions and agenda.
On top of that he seems to be a lap dog for SuperSport.
He should stick to fishing programs.
At least then he can blame the weather if the farking fish don’t bite.
Bad news for the rest of now that Ross is leaving the Bulls. Glad he’s going to France.
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