laager
RUGBY:Steve Morris
THE loss of one Test match does not spell the doom of the game of rugby in this country as many would have you imagine. But the return to the laager mentality that seems to prevail among the Springbok management definitely edges the game that way.
Gary Teichmann’s side face a monumental task at King’s Park this Saturday against a British Lions side which already hold a 1-0 advantage in the three-Test series and play with increasing confidence at each outing.
And, while the Lions improve, we regress. There are signs of it everywhere on the field. It doesn’t need the sage comments of former coach Kitch Christie to point that out. There is, as Christie observed, a lack of on-field leadership and a distinct game plan.
It could well be argued that this is a legacy of the short and largely unlamented tenure of Andre Markgraaff as the pilot at the coaching helm. Markgraaff’s express belief was that all the planning was done before the first whistle blast and all the players had to do was follow like automatons.
It is an open secret that this approach was one of the major causes of friction between captain Francois Pienaar and a coach he neither particularly liked nor fully trusted. Pienaar was a cerebral player, a leader of men and certainly not the type of automaton that Markgraaff demanded.
The ideas that Markgraaff wanted to make work had great merit. It was the implementation of them that went wrong. Similarly, Carel du Plessis, the man now in charge, has based his thinking on a theory of getting the ball wide using both forwards and backs. It simply has not worked.
You have to allow the men on the field to change their style, adapt their pattern to what is going on around them. They are, after all, not chess pieces and the folly of using Plan A and, when that does not produce results, using Plan A again is there for all to see.
Yet it is off the field that the greatest problems are starting to emerge. Take the secrecy over the fact that James Small was never going to be fit for the second Test as just one example of the mafia approach to team management. But Small, battling a niggling hamstring injury, was down to travel with the rest of the Springbok squad to Durban. He never even left Cape Town and yet this was deemed not worthy of comment by Du Plessis. Neither was the fact that Japie Mulder had to fly home to the Reef and consult a specialist in Pretoria about his shoulder injury.
Worse though was Du Plessis on the subject of Hennie le Roux’s availability to fill what emerged at Newlands as a gaping deficiency in midfield. Le Roux, said Du Plessis, was injured, suffering from a groin strain. Nonsense, said his home province Gauteng. Le Roux had played the previous Friday and distinguished himself.
Yes, the coach is under pressure in his first series against serious opposition. And yes again, he has the right to decide who will and will not play. But this type of game-playing does nothing for the image of the game or for the morale of the men who have to play it.
It would be well to take a leaf out of Christie’s book: try for transparency and then play to the strengths of the players available rather than trying to mould them into a pattern that will begin to leak the kind of weaknesses evident at Newlands.
The Lions have followed a simple pattern, a strategy that has brought Martin Johnson’s men to the brink of following the example of the all-conquering 1974 Lions, of which both manager Fran Cotton and coach Ian McGeechan were integral parts.
This strategy has been based on the belief that, while they might not be able to beat the Springboks in the tight five, they could hold them. They did. This left the loose trio free, after the confusion of the first few set pieces, to run amok.
In turn, this freedom was given full rein by the indecisive service from the base of the scrum by Joost van der Westhuizen and the determination of flyhalf Henry Honiball to run diagonally and serve up the flat pass. Du Plessis must take the blame for this.
In sharp contrast, the Lions ran hard and direct, using the influence of rugby league to take the game to the opposition rather than let it flow at them in unexpected ways. Quite simply, they kept the Springboks under pressure and it showed in the number of penalties and the handling lapses among the South Africans.
Add to this Andre Joubert’s uncharacteristic hesitancy and the fact that Naka Drotske, fine scrummager that he is, could not find his jumpers in the crucial area of the lineout, and the equation could hardly have come out differently despite the two late Lions tries which sealed matters. There was a distinct feeling throughout the first Test that it was just a matter of time.
It only took one look at the expression of utter hopeless bewilderment on the face of Du Plessis as he looked at the Newlands scoreboard to discover just how bereft of lateral thinking the game has become in this country, and how far we have regressed since the heady days of winning the 1995 World Cup. There is a feeling of pessimism rather than expectancy in the air.
Sadly, this feeling persists for the meeting at King’s Park which is so vital to the Springboks if they are to keep a series that is fast slipping away from them alive.
We have the forwards – and with some misgivings of a side without a playmaker of Le Roux’s superb class – to take on the Lions and beat them and yet we are falling into the same trap of panic and disarray as befell the Springbok selectorial brains trust in 1974 … albeit for different reasons.
Then, the Lions used a type of psychological fifth column which convinced the South Africans that they were picking the wrong players. Now we seem to be doing it totally unaided. McGeechan gets on with the job of picking the best available to counter anything and everything we can throw at them while the Springbok management creeps further into its self- made shell.
What it all adds up to is that the Lions suddenly finds themselves favourites going int o the Durban encounter, better prepared physically and psychologically, backed by a management team which is open with them on all matters surrounding the tour and the match ahead.
And a management which offers rewards in unexpected ways to those who are not going to make the Test team – such as giving Nigel Redman the captaincy against Free State.
Contrast this with the way Le Roux and Kobus Wiese have been treated … and then see if you still believe this series can be rescued.