The hard men chosen for the Lions squad arrive on Sunday, and the Springboks are looking particularly vulnerable at the moment
RUGBY:Steve Morris
THERE must surely be the realisation that, as was the case when this country was first re-admitted to the international arena five years ago, our rugby has again suffered the type of introverted arrogance of false belief that has allowed the rest of the world to leave us standing.
Just how deep the current malaise is will soon be demonstrated in two different areas: Northern Transvaal captain Adriaan Richter’s insistence that the Super 12 will stand the resurgent Blue Bulls in good stead for the Currie Cup, and the arrival this weekend of the first professional version of the British Lions.
Both are rooted in the same old traditional evil of South African provincialism. But the latter is – or should be – the most worrying for this country and is not, as some would hazard to suggest, a platform for building a Springbok side to contest the subsequent tri-nation Sanzar Series against New Zealand and Australia.
Springbok coach Carel du Plessis faces an unwelcome baptism, rooted deep in the inferno of near disarray. Any number of senior players are doubtful starters through injury or forced inactivity at top level against the Lions, thanks to the attrition of a Super 12 season that the South African Rugby Football Union has seen fit to contest on a provincial rather than a regional basis.
Enough has already been said about the wisdom of the New Zealanders and Australians in first identifying their top players and then turning out Super 12 sides on a regionalised squad basis, adding selected strengths to already powerful sides and allowing some respite from the sheer physical demands of the competition for those players who need it.
It is not a coincidence that the team which has done best in Super 12 over the past two seasons has been Ian McIntosh’s Natal combination. Like all the South African sides, the Banana Bafana have been riddled with injury. But McIntosh has used his available talent sparingly and well, both developing players by letting them play at this level and substituting with an astuteness that must surely have been one of the major catalysts of the change in the laws on swopping players.
It could well be argued that the Lions have many of the same problems in the attempted blending of four nations into a rugby transitory commonwealth that apply to rigidly drawn provincial loyalties in this country.
But it must also be remembered that manager Fran Cotton and coach Ian McGeechan come from long backgrounds – and successful ones at that – in the overcoming of such divisions, both having been integral parts of the great side of 1974 under Willie John McBride. They have also assembled a squad which is aimed primarily at negating the strengths of the Springbok machine so clinically put together by former national coach Kitch Christie to win the World Cup.
Du Plessis, as yet untested as an originator of Springbok strategy – he gets his first chance against Tonga at Newlands on June 10 – has a little over two weeks to refine his thinking.
By June 2, the new coach must pencil in the names of a squad to take him through a bruising and congested season; a side to beat the Lions and carry through to the Sanzar test which follows. And he has to do so in the full knowledge that players of the stature of Kobus Wiese, Mark Andrews, Andre Joubert, James Dalton, Jacques Olivier, Japie Mulder and Hennie le Roux are on the walking wounded list, and that the likes of Fritz van Heereden and James Small have been languishing in the Nite Series and have played no part in the Super 12.
Du Plessis also has a captain in Gary Teichmann who – on recent evidence – has played himself into a state of near exhaustion and is rightly being rested by McIntosh this weekend. Inspiration and leadership do not come from a tired mind and a body racked by the type of physical pounding that is at the core of Teichmann’s huge-hearted game. McIntosh at least has the sense to see this.
It also does no good to point at any differences – real or imagined – between rugby as it is played in the two opposing hemispheres. Martin Johnson’s Lions are no hastily assembled bunch of whipping boys. Cotton & Co have put together a side with the full understanding that playing the Springboks in South Africa is a demanding and arduous business. They have, for the most part, looked at the hard men to do the job, opting for veterans of rugby league like Scott Quinnell, John Bentley, Scott Gibbs, Allan Bateman, David Young and Alan Tait to take on the South African forwards and breach the much-vaunted Springbok defence.
This they have done at the expense of leaving out players like Mike Catt, whose first-hand knowledge of South African conditions and playing mentality from his own days at Eastern Province would, to most minds, have assured him of a spot in the 35-strong squad.
They have gone for the hard men and perhaps, in the light of history, this is the right decision. Arguably, the last Lions tour under England lock Billy Beaumont 17 winters ago, did not and paid the price in a raft of injuries that all but sunk the tour. South Africans by nature tend to play their game in a physical manner, and the hard grounds of the Highveld are as unyielding as the men who regularly play on them.
We have yet to assess whether the Lions’ selectors have made the right choices in the components they intend putting together. And whether having used the opening eight matches of a tough tour itinerary as an assembly line for the Test machine, whether that machine can indeed run efficiently. One believes that this will indeed be the case. Cotton has not built a sports good empire through lack of forethought or a dearth of planning, and he knows as much about South African rugby as anyone in the game.
He will know – as will his players before the final Test on July 5 rolls around – that quartering the country is as tough as facing the opposition, which in itself is difficult enough, with the easiest matches likely to be those against the crash- tackling Border side and the hard men of Mpumalanga in the coal mining country round Witbank.
It could just be that the arduous nature of the tour – allied to the ardent provincialism of the sides who all want a victory over the Lions – could work in Du Plessis’s favour. This has been the case in the past and there is no reason to suspect that 1997 will be any different.
But again, Cotton has anticipated this and neatly side-stepped any comparisons with McBride’s tourists by saying that it is the tests – and only the tests – that hold any significance in the greater picture of the coming tour.
In this he shares common ground with Du Plessis. The tests are what really matter. But that said, the itinerary, which looks so daunting, could work to the distinct advantage of the tourists, most of them now rested after the northern season and ready to use the tour to play themselves back to top fitness and form.
But most importantly, the Lions will provide an accurate gauge to the way we play, the way we think and the way we react to a game that changes on an almost daily basis.
This is an examination in which the pedigree of World Cup champions alone will amount to little or nothing.
Tour Itinerary
Sat May 24 v Eastern Province Invitation XV Port Elizabeth
Wed May 28 v Border East London
Sat May 31 v Western Province Cape Town
Wed June 4 v Mpumalanga Witbank
Sat June 7 v Northern Transvaal Pretoria
Wed June 11 v Gauteng Johannesburg
Sat June 14 v Natal Durban
Tue June 17 v Emerging Springboks Wellington
Sat June 21 v SOUTH AFRICA Cape Town
Tue June 24 v Free State Bloemfontein
Sat June 28 v SOUTH AFRICA Durban
Tue July 1 v Northern Free State Welkom
Sat July 5 v SOUTH AFRICA Johannesburg