Super 10: Skilful forwards lay the foundation
RUGBY: Jon Swift
THERE are times when the performance of a pack of forwards takes your breath away. The famed All Black eight-man blanket is invariably capable of eliciting this reaction.
The French rise to these heights when Gallic whim takes them, and of late both the English and the Scots — bar the slip against South Africa at Murrayfield — have shown they are capable of really turning the scews up front.
It is heartening then that Transvaal, this country’s premier provincial pack, should have shown this rarity of power, commitment and skill in the 21-18 Super 10 victory over New South Wales at Ellis Park last wekend.
Interesting to note that the first of Transvaal’s three tries came through the pack, the first in the fourth minute from a clever sneak in from a pile-up close to the line by scrumhalf Johan Roux and the second from stand-in skipper Rudolph Straueli.
With the World Cup looming, this performance must have given even the normally poker-faced Kitch Christie cause for an inner Mexican wave.
For it is on his principles that the driving red and white tide of Transvaal have based this surge in the engine room. Christie instilled his thinking on the game at forward on Transvaal as their coach. He has not changed his ideas since being elevated to coach of the national side.
The will to win ball and hold it — and don’t forget that a number of the Transvaal forwards feature very prominently in Christie’s plans at international level — seems at last to have been imprinted on the brains of our top provincial pack.
New South Wales and Wallaby skipper Phil Kearns underlined the truism that you can’t play rugby without the ball after the bruising encounter at Ellis Park.
“Transvaal’s ball retention was better than ours,” was the way the hooker whose mobility belies his brick outhouse build succinctly summed it up.
If this ability can be transported across the admittedly deep divide between Super 10 and Test rugby, one of the most nagging failings of South African sides since the country’s readmittance to world rugby will have been remedied.
The days of the kradadige vooros are over. This country can no longer afford jokes about prop forwards wearing the green and gold along the lines of, “He’s a great player … until you give him the ball.”
Every single member of a modern international side must handle with the same deftness and authority as a flyhalf. And, more importantly for a forward, be able to hang onto the ball once he has it in his hands.
Perhaps the best exponents of this ball retention against the Waratahs were the biggest and smallest men in the Transvaal pack, although it is perhaps unfair to single individual players out in a pack which fired on all cylinders.
James Dalton and Kobus Wiese — again, what a fine forward the big man with the Bart Simpson haircut is — understand these skills. Both love to go on the run with the ball in their hands in what is after all a running game.
It was the lack of these abilities that sunk Western Province more than any other mistakes they made or injuries they sustained in the convincing 33-21 defeat they suffered at the hands of Otago on their own Newlands turf.
Jeff Wilson made a huge impact on this game, but it must not be forgotten that the best chance a winger like Wilson has to run the ball at the opposition comes when the forwards have held their opponents in the tight.
And when, as was the case at Newlands, the loose forwards lack the real pace to get to the point of breakdown and the backline is dragged into the cover defence, the opposing threequarters on the fringes have an even easier job.
Ahead of Transvaal now lies the Super 10 encounter against North Harbour, not an entirely unknown quantity to the men from Ellis Park.
The side which plays largely in the shadow of the more glamorous Auckland — who conceded a 21-15 defeat to the deadly boot of Eric Herbert at the Free State stadium — always offer problems.
Most especially up front, where the famed New Zealand reliance on the scrum as the basis from which all other aspects of the game flow is imbued almost with the first breath.
Having taken the top Australian side on and beaten them, it remains to be seen whether Transvaal can dismantle 15 New Zealanders who have never heard of the word defeat.
One suspects from the showing against New South Wales that this is more than just a strong possibility.
ARTS