RUGBY: Jon Swift
Defeat on the Springbok tour that gets under way this week could be disastrous for Andre Markgraaff’s ‘vision’
AMID the emotional storm which has raged around the Springbok touring squad, the dissatisfaction about financial packages for the players and the rank idiocy of the nutters of the game issuing death threats to coach Andre Markgraaff, one crucial matter has got lost in the maelstrom. There is an extremely tough job of work ahead for Gary Teichmann and his side.
Over the next 48 days, the 36-strong squad travels to two continents and has five tough Tests to negotiate, two each against the Argentinian Pumas and the French, and an international against the resurgent Welsh.
There are also two side issues which need to be addressed. First, Markgraaff, as a direct result of his outpourings on a seemingly as yet uncharted vision for Springbok rugby, has placed himself and the side in the position of having to win. There can be no thought of coming second now and attempting to lay the blame on errant goal-kicking, bad bounces of the ball, one-eyed refereeing or the vagaries of the South African media.
The second point is that Teichmann has been handed a job in circumstances no captain should be placed in and faces the task of trying to weld together a touring party riven by the provincialistic thinking of old and the hugely varying contracts of the as yet largely ill-defined professional age.
It is no wonder that some of the more thinking players are less than keen to make the trip. For apart from all the internal problems Teichmann has to deal with off the field, there is the central business of making Springbok rugby work on it. Against the Argentinians, this is far from a walk in the park. The South Americans, like many of the nations on the fringe of rugby’s major league, delight in making life difficult for the big names in the game.
The Pumas may have several holes in their overall make-up, but taking the game to the opposition in the most direct and physical way is not one of them. They are as hard and uncompromising as any Louis Luyt edict.
Tuesday’s tour opener against Mendoza will be just the start of it. And it is from the opening game that Markgraaff will have to settle on his Test side for the opening international in Buenos Aires next Saturday, grafting the hard realities of reshaping the face of Springbok rugby into a team of winners once again.
In short, the scenario is exactly as former coach Kitch Christie paints it. ”Remember,” says one of the game’s shrewdest judges, ”that the scrummaging of the Argentinian front row is perhaps the best in world rugby right now.” Without first-choice loosehead Os du Randt, injured in a freak accident at his Bloemfontein home, Markgraaff has only Marius Hurter – a willing but as yet unfulfilled tighthead – to prop the other side of the scrum as a specialist.
Equally there must be a host of silent prayers winging their way heavenwards that veteran Andre Joubert sees out the tour without injury. One cannot help but feel that Russell Bennett is not the man to fill Joubert’s boots in the event of a mishap.
It would mean a shuffling of the side that would put James Small back in the No 15 jersey he wore earlier this season before Markgraaff sidelined the errant genius of the Natal flier for disciplinary reasons. Likewise, with the doubts over Hennie le Roux, Henry Honiball’s position at flyhalf becomes a problem that his tour deputy Franco Smith does not immediately seem the answer to in the case of injury. Neither does the prospect of young utility back Breyton Paulse inspire great confidence as a Test player, despite the talent he undoubtedly owns and will polish in the seasons to come.
Where, you have to ask yourself, is Gavin Lawless, a player with the ability and pedigree to fill either of these positions in the crunch?
Strange this, for the idea of a ”vision” surely means more than a pretty picture conjured up with your eyes closed to the nastiness of day-to-day reality. It should also mean a broadening of thought, but then lateral thinking has never played a huge part in the deliberations of our rugby administration.
And as tough as the Argentinian leg of the tour promises to be, the five games which follow in France have all the uncompromising feel of a chunk of the Pyrenees. Apart from the Tests in Bordeaux and at the Parc de Princes in Paris, there are games against the French Barbarians – amost a full Tricolor side in all but name – and two provincial selections.
The latter two games provide the French with the ideal opportunity to do what Australia and New Zealand managed so successfully in the Super 12: blood top players in what amount to national trial games against the world champions, and soften the South Africans up for the internationals. This, one feels, does show some vision on the part of the French.
It also makes things extremely difficult for Teichmann as a leader. Markgraaff has surely already mapped out his Test side. His history of sticking to what he believes to be right must underline this as fact. For how else could he have insisted on picking two players – Christiaan Scholtz and Boeta Wessels – who were still on the injury list when he named them and have subsequently opted to stay at home?
It is this rigidity of thinking on the part of the coach, his insistence on sticking to a game plan if you like, that threatens to be the biggest obstacle facing the Springboks in France.
For physical as they undoubtedly are, the French have the ability to throw away the coaching manual and turn the structures of a game into a mystical and mysterious maze of magic. Against this mercurial ability, settling your game plan on whether to throw to the front or back jumpers in the line-out is simply not enough. There has to be free rein of initiative allowed the captain on the field. One wonders whether this will be the case.
But to return to the way Markgraaff has postioned himself personally and the team in general, victory from the very start becomes paramount. Resounding losses in the opening leg of the tour in South America could have a distrous trickle-down effect on the rest of it and on a squad where the welding already shows signs of metal fatigue.
All this also suggests that while Wales may have had their problems over the last decade, they still present a formidable threat on their home turf in the last Test at Cardiff Arms before the stadium is reshaped for the 1999 World Cup.
A side with the smell of defeat in its nostrils, the hint of home and Christmas just 10 days distant can hardly be expected to run out as winners.
One can only hope Teichmann and his men are equal to the task the selectors have set them, give the touring party the support patriotism if nothing else owes them … and then perhaps cast one’s eyes heavenwards yet again.