Boks badly exposed
South Africa played like world chumps in Europe, writes Keo in his weekly Business Day column.
Let’s skip all the emotional claptrap, the political correctness and new found South African way of justifying that our teams don’t lose, the other teams just score more points. Let’s get real and call Saturday’s Springbok Test defeat and the five-match tour of Europe exactly what it was: an absolute disaster and a disgrace.
I love John Robbie on talkback radio. He is the best because he calls it like it is, but when he is explaining losses to France and Ireland as nothing more than fatigue I get worried about those ultra positive contracts one has to sign to be allowed onto SuperSport.
The Boks lost to a half decent French team, a Leicester team missing 12 of their regulars, a Saracens SA XV that would not end in the top six of the Currie Cup, made Italy look like Six Nations contenders and should have been put away by 20 points by Ireland, who in the last year have been the most consistent international team of the year. That the Boks were named IRB Team of the Year after taking a beating from the Irish was as close as it comes to an Irish joke, and it wasn’t a particularly funny one.
Australia losing to Scotland put some perspective to the Tri-Nations campaign. New Zealand’s changing of coaching roles and reversal to a more conservative approach orchestrated by the world’s best flyhalf Dan Carter, who incidentally did not play in the two defeats against the Boks in South Africa, adds more reality to the quality of the Tri-Nations win and the All Blacks fitness in Marseilles ended any arguments that the Boks lost because they were simply too tired. The All Blacks, in club and provincial games, played just as much rugby as the Boks and the Test side have played even more matches this year than the Springboks.
The Boks lost because a French team physically roughed them up and exposed the fragile Bok front row with John Smit as a tighthead. The Bok scrum only resembled a quality unit when BJ Botha was at tighthead against Ireland and Smit was at hooker. The moment Smit moved to tighthead the only area of dominance that belonged to the Boks disappeared.
The lineout, the strength of the Boks since the 2007 World Cup, was a shambles and the fact that the man who coached the lineout between 2004 and 2007 was not even mentioned in the post-match TV analysis was as diabolical as the justification for the defeats.
Gert Smal’s true value to the Boks was illustrated in Dublin on Saturday. The Bok lineout did not struggle because Smit’s lineout throwing was poor. Smit is the best lineout thrower in world rugby. The Bok lineout was reduced to rubble because the new coaching staff have not changed anything since 2007. The calls are still the same and this was a case of the master (Smal, now with Ireland) upstaging the student (Victor Matfield). I have never seen a Test where Matfield has been so innocuous and lacked such presence. Smal, more than anything else, beat the Boks and it showed how little this team has actually advanced.
The senior players have run the team since Peter de Villiers took over, but there comes a point when a team needs a coach who coaches and not a coach who takes them to the ground in the comfort also known as a team bus.
Should De Villiers get fired? No. But he needs help and the most qualified person to help him, in the role of national director of coaching, is the man who masterminded South Africa’s 2007 World Cup win. Jake White is the soundboard that could turn De Villiers into a coach and not the players’ mate who allows them to do as they please.
The fatigued South African players are hanging around for a match against the All Blacks. Could someone at the South African Rugby Union explain that one to me? No because there isn’t anyone there with the rugby acumen to give me that answer.
Think of this tour and the chaos and lies. Let’s start with the lie about transformation. Black players selected in the squad were sent home and white players not in the original squad ended up playing in the Tests when De Villiers hit the first of many panic buttons.
De Villiers said Smit’s future was at tighthead, so why did he draft in BJ Botha? Why was Bandise Maku not put on the bench against Italy instead of Adriaan Strausss, who was not even in the original tour squad? Window dressing at its most crass. The same applies to the selection of Davon Raubenheimer and Ashley Johnson when Jean Deysel also went straight from the beach to the Test squad. I believe the selections of Deysel and Strauss should have been made originally, but the squad chosen was a transformation con that insulted any decent black rugby player in this country.
If Smit is going to the World Cup at tighthead then they had to persist with him through all the struggles. If Morne Steyn is going to kick South Africa that World Cup-winning penalty then you play him through the shocker he had in Dublin and write it off to an experience that will make him stronger. When Juan de Jongh is the find of the midweek side and Adi Jacobs gets injured you don’t draft a 50-Test cap Springbok based in Munster into the Test squad and get him to sit on the bench for 63 minutes. You either start with Jean de Villiers, who is the best inside centre in the game, or you say to the newcomer De Jongh this is your chance to take that step up. If South Africa had lost with the next generation of player there would be no issue, but to have got beaten so convincingly with the best team available, outside of Bakkies Botha and Frans Steyn, then the selectors need to ask themselves why they haven’t resigned.
The tour objective was to develop players and win. Neither objective was achieved. More careers were broken than made and the denial within the team simply intensified.
The rugby the Boks played was poor. The substitutions were not tactical they were terrible, and they have been all year. The All Blacks played stupid rugby against South Africa in South Africa and paid the price. The Boks fed off their mistakes and never had to play risk rugby.
In Hamilton, the Boks were a cross kick from defeat, in Pretoria they were saved by a last minute 53m penalty and in Johannesburg they were pulverized by the British & Irish Lions. In Toulouse, Leicester, Wembley and Croke Park they looked like world chumps and not world champs.
Whoever let Smal go should be fired, yet that won’t happen because no one will remember him ever asking to make a further contribution to the Springboks. There is no explanation why a guy who won South Africa the World Cup won’t be used to improve the chances of them retaining the Cup.
Excellence is punished; mediocrity gets the equivalent of a knighthood.
This tour did not ask questions, it provided every answer and someone at South African rugby has to have he balls to bring together the best rugby brains, facilitate the uber egos and clean the wound instead of adding an elastoplasts by claiming the Boks are the IRB Team of the Year.
Now is the time for honesty because the best team in the world does not get smashed in Brisbane, Leicester, Wembley, Toulouse, Dublin, Johannesburg and sneak two three-point wins in Pretoria and Hamilton.
The Boks are not as tired as we think and they are not as good as we think. But they could be the best if every agenda was put to one side and decisions were made that benefit the Springboks and confront issues instead of blaming referees, fatigue and glorifying five-point losses.
December 1st, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Well written Keo, I saw the signs in the B&I tour. The present SA coaching regime abilities is very poor. Gary Gold must rate as one of the worst forward coaches this country has ever seen, fortunately for him he can talk the talk. **** Muir as a back line coach does not bring any innovation to the side. I cannot understand how the Lions have made him head coach for season 2010. PDV would never have been coach if it was not for the ANC instructing SARFU to toe the line. It can be clearly seen in the interviews when he & John Smit is together that JS persona’s is that of the senior person. The journalists have also latched on to this and treat JS as the snr party.
Watch the fun & games next year as panic starts to kreep in.
Innovation will keep you winning! Does this coaching regime have innovative ideas, I do not see it!
December 2nd, 2009 at 8:52 am
@Kryger: I echo your sentiments fully. PdV has done little more than implement the successful Bulls template. He has shown virtually no innovation to speak of.
This template has brought us much success, but only when we’re winning the physical collisions and are accurate on the kick-chase. The limitations of this approach were shown up badly on the recent tour, and when the situation called for a change of game plan, the players were unable to respond. Much of the blame for that must go to the coaching staff who are happy to rest on their laurels while the rest of the rugby world is advancing.
I don’t think PdV has the maturity to be an international coach. He is technically and temperamentally ill-equipped. When the team wins, he becomes big-headed and arrogant, and when the team loses, he glosses over the obvious weaknesses in the performance. It’s a formula for long-term failure.