The French Barbarian team is packed with talent, but the Springbok `dirt-trackers’ team has been playing well enough to show that they can meet the challenge
RUGBY:Andy Capostagno
T HE trouble with touring is that just when you’ve gotten to like a place, you have to move on. Those of us lucky enough to spend three days in Mendoza were less than gruntled about having to climb back onto the plane and rejoin the rat race in Buenos Aires. Mendoza had peace and quiet and waiters who were incapable of saying “say when” when pouring whisky.
By contrast, BA is the true definition of a 24-hour city. Coming home in a taxi at 4am down the world’s widest street (9th of July Avenue) was like negotiating Johannesburg highways in rush hour.
But with all its hustle and bustle, BA had a laid-back attitude that rubbed off on the Springbok management and players. It was summed up by an old lady I met on the plane back from Mendoza. She said, “In Buenos Aires we don’t worry that our children are only thinking about going out at midnight. They go to a disco and dance the night away, and when they come home at 7am, their parents are not so worried because it is already light outside.”
Come to think of it, it’s probably good news that the tour moves on to France immediately, because the Test team now has two weeks off ahead of the first Test against the Tricolors, and the idea of a mobile party that goes on until sun-up, might be too difficult for a few of them to resist for a whole fortnight. Far better to closet them in sleepy Brive, a town far enough from any significant action to keep the management’s collective mind at peace.
After all, the French leg of the tour is clearly going to require a higher level of performance, and hence concentration on matters rugby. The management have shown their appreciation of this fact by producing a neat sidestep for the opening match, against the French Barbarians in Brive on Saturday, preferring to throw the dirt- trackers into the fray rather than the Test side.
Manager Andre Markgraaff said, “It was a difficult decision to make because it would have been great to keep the Test team together for a third week to hone their game, but, in the end, we decided that there was more to gain from keeping them fresh and avoiding injuries to key players.”
A manager less wary of giving the French press a sniff of controversy might also have said that the way the midweek side are playing at the moment, they might make a better fist of it against the Barbarians than their more exalted colleagues. So far, in two Tests, the Springboks have managed a total of about 48 minutes playing the kind of game Markgraaff and his team are trying to instil, while Wayne Fyvie’s men played the game for about an hour against Cuyo alone.
But Saturday’s match is not against a limited bunch of provincial amateurs. The Barbarians have included 14 internationals, among them the great Josh Kronfeld and the even greater Philippe Sella, winner of a world record 111 Test caps. Having retired from the highest level, Sella is seeing out his rugby dotage in England playing for Saracens in North London. That’s rather like sending a Stradivarius to play in a country hoedown.
Jeremy Thompson’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when I told him who his opposite number would be. He had been plucking out the chords of Autumn Leaves on his battered guitar on a dreamy Buenos Aires Sunday afternoon. Mention of Sella silenced the guitar and Thompson exited stage right, scratching his peroxide hairdo, dreaming of the contest to come.
The Barbarians have picked one of their World Cup half-back combinations in Fabien Galthie and Christophe Deylaud, while Philippe Sadourny’s understudy Sebastian Viars slots in at fullback. Up front Kronfeld and his back row partners will be looking to an intriguing lock combination to win enough ball for the Barbarians.
Veteran Test number eight Marc Cecillon has been moved into the engine room alongside Kiwi lock Grant Ross. Ross will be on his home field, however, having emigrated a couple of years ago after playing in an All Black trial. He is widely regarded as the best lineout forward in France, and although he is now 38, he may yet win a Test cap for his adopted country.
It will be incumbent on the Springbok locks to keep Ross quiet, and there is every chance they will do so. Krynauw Otto is still recovering from the punch that laid him out against Cuyo, so Hannes Strydom will revert to his favourite position at the front of the line, with Fritz van Heerden jumping in the middle. Some might say “poor Fritz, always being picked out of position”, but that is not the way assistant coach Nick Mallett is thinking. He said, “Fritz plays his heart out wherever he is picked and he is such a talented player that he can do you a real job at flank. But I believe that he is our middle jumper for the 1999 World Cup, and I think if he sticks to lock, he could be another Ian Jones.”
With Kobus Wiese likely to be put out to pasture before then, the idea of Van Heerden and Mark Andrews in tandem is a tantalising prospect.
South Africa’s Kiwi will have the eyes of the management trained on him as well. Kevin Putt’s quick decision-making behind the forwards, together with a quick, short pass to a flat-lying flyhalf, is one of the key pieces of glue that holds this team together. So much so that Joost van der Westhuizen’s position in the Test side is under threat for the right reasons for the first time in his career.
Joost admits that he has spent so long at Northerns developing a long pass to a deep- standing flyhalf, or breaking around the fringes like an extra flanker, that he is struggling to come to terms with the almost anonymous role that Markgraaff now wants him to play, the role that Putt, in the best form of his career, is playing to perfection.
But the wonderful boon of the new substitution laws has taken the immediate pressure away from the protagonists. It is not speculating above and beyond the call of duty to imagine a first Test against France that starts with Putt firing off his passes to a fresh team, and finishes with Van der Westhuizen tackling the opposition to a standstill and bulldozing his way over the gain and try line against exhausted opponents.
Happy the man who has such options at his command. Happy enough to make another bunch of critics eat humble pie before this tour is over.
ENDS