Steve Morris Rugby
We would have to take Springbok coach Nick Mallett’s word on the fact that disgraced prop Toks van der Linde intended no deliberate harm during his unsavoury tap dance on the head of French Barbarian David Dantiacq.
The French centre and his Gallic counterpart, referee Joel Dume, had different perspectives on the incident shortly before the interval of Tuesday’s game in Biarritz: while Dantiacq writhed in pain, Dume sought brief confirmation from the touch judge before enforcing the letter of the law.
Without in any way condoning the incident, unwelcome as it was in the overall context of the first tour under Mallett’s guiding hand, the red card could, ironically, have worked to the good of the Springbok tourists. It demonstrated, most aptly, just what the men who carry the mantle of World Champions are up against.
There is little doubt that the midweek front row were under extreme pressure from the start and that the French invitation side were living on the wrong side of the scrums with virtual impunity. But Van der Linde’s decision to appoint himself arbiter of the rights and wrongs of the netherworld of ruck and maul, will have given Mallett a more solid starting point to impose his will on the collective side than any number of motivational speeches ever would.
The Springboks, who worked so hard after re-admittance to shake off the tag of the dirtiest side in international rugby, will once again be bombarded with every variation of the epithet that the French and English languages can muster.
It will draw them closer as an embattled entity and, while the method of this happening is questionable in the extreme, the coach surely will relish the oneness among his players and draw for the coach the lines that cannot be crossed.
Quite simply, it demonstrated for a watching world the crack in the South African psyche sides as astute as the New Zealand All Blacks have always been quick to exploit; the unwritten maxim that when you are under pressure, the way out is to lash out.
Van der Linde is the villain in this particular piece, but there is a distinct feeling that unless Mallett harnesses the natural aggression of his players in a productive sense and channels it into the more legal manoeuvres allowed in the ebb and flow of the game, he will not be the last player to swop his green and gold jersey for the black stetson of the bad man.
All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick, as much a consummate psychoanalyst of the game as a hardened hooker, has long understood the way the South African mind works on the field. Two incidents in which he was central prove this. The first involved Johan le Roux, the second John Allan … and both were to cost Springbok rugby dear.
The Le Roux incident was the culmination of some supreme provocation on the part of Fitzpatrick – at least from Le Roux’s published memoirs on the affair – and led to Le Roux effectively ending his own career by doing the unthinkable outside the filmed horrors of Hannibal Lektor and the cannibalistic madness of Mike Tyson’s plastic surgery on Evander Holyfield, and biting the offending All Black’s ear.
Off the field, Le Roux is an affable and sometimes charming man. On it he proved to be a timebomb, volatile enough for England and Lions hooker Brian Moore – no sainted choirboy himself – to typify as a rolling- eyed nutter.
The second Fitzpatrick-fuelled incident came in the first set scrum of a Tri- nations Test. Going down he gave Allan what can be politely termed a hooker’s greeting, a cheerful nod of the forehead which raised a corresponding lump between Allan’s eyes. The South African hooker – who had already experienced the All Black way of things in a Scots jersey – reacted predictably, rearing up and flailing away at the New Zealander.
Fitzpatrick, as always, protested his innocence, accepting both the momentary physical discomfort of being on the wrong end of a set of angry knuckles … and the three points which followed.
All Fitzpatrick had done was to exploit the weakness inherent in Springbok play: that often overawed dependence on pride which, while it forms the strengths of the South African game, also invariably exposes its mentally unprotected flank.
That there is a current gulf in ability between the Springbok Test side and the midweek team is evident from the 40-22 loss in Biarritz. Mallett knew this before the tour party left this country for the five- Test journey through Europe. And although he only had two midweek games to work with on the truncated tour, it must surely have been one of his priorities to close that chasm and build towards the more rounded squad so vital to his success on a continuing basis.
It is interesting then that the coach, an explosive character in his own right, would have had another and probably more pressing priority forced on him by Van der Linde’s premature withdrawal to watch out the remainder of the game in front of a TV monitor outside the South African dressing- room.
Van der Linde presented a forlorn figure, one lost in the cloudy aftermath of regret; his tour over and his dreams shattered. Perhaps he just cared too much to have weighed the consequences. One would hope that this was the case.
Mallett will undoubtedly get the playing personnel and patterns right. His own record would suggest that this is so. What he really has to do – and do quickly – though is get their heads right. If he does not succeed in this urgent endeavour, no matter how close his side are drawn together in adversity off the field, they will be dragged asunder on it by referees looking specifically for the sorts of infringement that a growing modern legend would have as part and parcel of the Springboks.
It is, for the coach, a task approaching that of stamping out a fire in a dynamite factory.