Playing Francois Pienaar out of position was the wrong move, but Chris Rossouw moving from hooker to eighthman was a success for Transvaal
RUGBY: Jon Swift
THERE are those who still believe fervently in the school of thought so successfully propagated by the late Danie Craven that if a man is what the Doc called “a footballer” then no position on the rugby field should be foreign to him.
It is an extension of that philosophy which had Mark Andrews playing at No 8 in the World Cup, and engendered the rise and demise of specialist eighthman Gary Teichmann in that vital position in the one-off Test against Wales at Ellis Park.
The shoulders the mantle fell on were those of Francois Pienaar, who swopped the jersey he shared with Madiba for a spot at the back of the scrum for both Transvaal and the Amabokoboko.
There will be few who can validly argue that Pienaar is not a footballer. But no amount of footballing talent was ever going to make him a natural No 8.
There was another side to it for the South African and Transvaal teams with Pienaar played out of position. At the back of the scrum, Pienaar did little with the purpose and in-born instinct that marked him as such a special player on the flank.
He had to second guess every move, concentrate on where he should be and what he should be doing next. It did the game and the man a disservice … especially when that finely focused concentration on the job at hand took the edge off Pienaar’s finest attribute, stamping his own personality on a side and leading it from the front.
It is surely reading too much into a simple positional switch from the 26-23 Transvaal victory over Waikato at Ellis Park to say that bringing in Chris Rossouw, a South African Schools No 8 turned Springbok hooker, at the back of the scrum and switching Pienaar back to his rightful position on the flank was the vital difference from the side which had lost four out of four Super 12 matches on a disastrous tour of Australia and New Zealand.
It would also be unfair to a team that had, finally, started to click. The difference was that they did, at last, play like a side and not like a collection of talented but individual players who just happened to be wearing the same colour jerseys.
One wonders just what effect the withdrawal of first Kitch Christie and then Ray Mordt had on tour and how long it will take Grizz Wylie to mesh into Louis Luyt’s Transvaal. The province has had enough problems with James Dalton and Johan le Roux suspended on tour and a list of injuries that could have come from the battle of Delville Wood.
But it must be said that having a captain with his mind engaged in other matters cannot have helped a Super 12 cause that was far from starcrossed from the first humiliating defeat at the hands of New South Wales in Sydney.
Pienaar simply did not deserve the treatment — willing though he may have been in the service of his province and country to accept it — that was forced on him. He is too valuable as a leader of men for this to be otherwise.
Against the All Black-loaded Waikato combination, it was Pienaar who rallied the players to twice come from behind to take a match they could so easily have lost and subsequently descended yet another rung down the ladder to total despair.
There are few sides which could have come back from the potentially fatal wounding of a 10- point deficit inside the first 10 minutes to deservedly snatch the half-time lead. Or many sides for that matter who would have been endowed with the courage to see that lead disappear in the second half, go behind and yet still come out on top.
As previously noted, every one of the Transvaal players deserves praise for the manner in which it was done. Not least of them fullback Gavin Lawless who calmly slotted the two late penalties which made the difference. But as Naas Botha used to say: “You have to have the forwards to get you into the position to kick.”
And, in the context of the Transvaal victory, you have to have a captain to make those forwards believe they still have enough left in their tired frames to keep a side which is ahead of them on the scoreboard under the pressure to concede the penalties Lawless ultimately goaled.
Even the carping critics who still persist in the typically South African myopia of denying what a world-beating forward Pienaar is, cannot overlook the spirit of captaincy which rode the storm-tossed Transvaal side through the narrows they faced.
But, that said, Rossouw had a profound effect on the game as well, barrelling off the back of the scrum like a man possessed. It was not the performance one would immediately associate with the art of hooking.
In delivering the performance he did — and his speed to the breakdown when Lawless hit the upright on his first penalty attempt had much to do with the try which eventually fell to Pienaar in the first half — Rossouw underlined the Christie contention that it will be speed and handling ability which will typify the No 8 under the revamped scrum laws.
It is also one of the ironies of a game which has become increasingly position-specialised that Rossouw was able to switch from one pole of the business end of the game to the other with such fluidity and purpose.
Rossouw is not a small man in the reckoning of an average local outfitter, but hardly fits the mould which has been cast over the past decade of a tall and hefty eighthman. But then perhaps this country was guilty of starting the trend by picking Lofty Nel at the back of the scrum against the 1970 All Blacks.
It was taken to extremes by the French in the Seventies who could never decide whether Benoit Dauga or Walter Spangero should play in the second or the third row and made the Gallic compromise — not, it must be said, one accepted by either player — of alternating them at lock and loose forward.
Rossouw is aided by the new laws which effectively bind the flanks to the side of the scrum and Christie’s foresight in pointing out that things will change is valid . It could just mean the end of the cumbersome qualities of the Ben Clarkes of the rugby world in the near future.
Rossouw cannot yet be classified as a specialist No 8. But then we have done some stranger things in this country, like playing Free State eighthman Gerrie Sonnekus at scrumhalf against Willie John McBride’s marauding Lions in 1974.
There will always be room for the footballer a la Doc Craven, but more and more the age of specialisation has arrived alongside the way overdue process of paying players their true worth. And playing someone as valuable as Pienaar out of position, just isn’t worth it.