Andy Capostagno Rugby
By 6.15 on Saturday morning (South African time) the Super 12 will be over. By the time the first weekend of June rolls around we could all be suffering from withdrawal symptoms.
Certainly M-Net will find its weekends considerably more difficult to fill because, although the first international team of the winter has arrived, not even the Irish can play more than one game at a time.
The Canterbury Crusaders may have gone to sleep for a significant portion of the match against the Coastal Sharks at Lancaster Park, but a good rest before a hard fight isn’t a bad idea. No one has won at Eden Park in three years of the Super 12, the time is ripe.
The Auckland machine has managed to camouflage the loss off such important figures as Sean Fitzpatrick and Zinzan Brook and statistics suggest the Blues have won a significant number of games with less than 40% possession.
This tightrope-walking may be effective against teams less keen on keeping the ball than Canterbury, but it relies far too much on lucky bounces and accommodating referees.
With Andrew Mehrtens at his majestic best, expect the Crusaders to complete one of the greatest comebacks since Lazarus: winning the competition after being bottom of the log four weeks into the campaign.
Reactions to Super 12 1998 have varied from enthusiastic to mildly entertained and I have even met rugby people who thought the whole thing was a crushing bore.
But not even those sadly deluded folk can compare with New Zealand coach John Hart who seems to have treated the whole competition as nothing more than a three-month side-show.
Hart’s first All Black team of the season was selected on Monday, but to all intents and purposes it could have been picked last December.
Remember what happened? In December at Twickenham, the All Black halo slipped.
Having won all their previous tests in 1997, the test which brought the curtain down on Zinzan Brooke’s illustrious career was a 26-all draw. England built up a massive first-half advantage and the All Blacks clawed their way back to late parity.
Questions were asked. Was Frank Bunce too old? Were the tight five likely to remain together for the 1999 World Cup?
Five months down the line Hart’s team to play in the All Black trials against a New Zealand Barbarians 15 has not avoided those questions entirely, but on the subject of form during the Super 12, he has drawn a discreet veil.
Of the team which drew with England, 12 remain.
At scrum-half Ofisa Tonu’u replaces Justin Marshall, whose Achilles injury will probably not heal fast enough to allow him to be considered for the Tri- Nations. At number eight Taine Randell takes over from the retired Brooke, with Michael Jones slotting into Randell’s place on the side of the scrum.
Both of those selections being enforced, the only actual change that Hart has made is at hooker where Anton Oliver replaces Norm Hewitt, a Highlander for a Hurricane in Super 12 speak.
Considering that three of the four Super 12 semi-finalists were from New Zealand, Hart’s vote of confidence could be seen as somewhat conservative. Consider for instance, that the only Canterbury player in the starting 15 is flyhalf Andrew Mehrtens, a man who had a fabulous tournament, but whose pedigree was hardly in doubt anyway.
Consider also that Bunce and Walter Little were not always the first choice centre pairing for the Waikato Chiefs this season.
What is the point of having the power to choose if you don’t exercise that power?
Crusaders centre Mark Mayerhofler may be the form man, and he has at least earned himself a place on the bench, but until someone or something proves otherwise, Bunce is still the champ.
Is there a moral here? Perhaps.
Nick Mallett announces his first Springbok side of the year this weekend. If he took form during the Super 12 as a guide he would be hard-pressed to select more than five of the team which started the last international of 1997 against Scotland at Murrayfield.
Let us remind ourselves of that team, the one that put 60 points on Scotland to round off a wonderfully successful tour.
Percy Montgomery, James Small, Andr Snyman, Dick Muir, Pieter Rossouw; Jannie de Beer, Werner Swanepoel, Gary Teichmann (captain), Andr Venter, Johan Erasmus, Mark Andrews, Krynauw Otto, Adrian Garvey, James Dalton, Os du Randt.
Mallett regards continuity as highly as Hart and he would like to reselect most of that team.
But Dick Muir has retired, and Du Randt and Dalton are injured.
Furthermore the halfback combination for the Scotland game was Mallett’s second choice. Joost van der Westhuizen and Henry Honiball were both injured.
Already we have five new names and it becomes clear that any coach who wants some kind of continuity is going to have to, by and large, ignore form – and that should be the case here.
Small has spent much of the season awol. Mallett admitted in mid-Super 12 that he had had no luck in his attempts to contact his maverick winger, who was out of the Western Stormers side with an injury which seemed to come and go, depending on Small’s mood at the time.
Perhaps Mallett’s assistant coach Alan Solomons is having the same problem now that he has taken over from Harry Viljoen at Province. Maybe that is why Small’s career seems to be drifting towards another out-take from The Young and The Restless.
But those who would shoo Small away from South African rugby have short memories. In December last year he broke Danie Gerber’s Springbok try-scoring record. The man who gave the scoring pass was Montgomery, a player who, at the post match press conference, was compared favourably as a fullback to Christian Cullen.
Montgomery is now playing like Samson after his visit to Delilah’s hair salon and so is the third musketeer, Rossouw.
But is that any reason to make a change?
Many names have been put forward to play in the back three, but if the Super 12 is as irrelevant to international rugby as Hart seems to believe, then Small, Rossouw and Montgomery deserve the chance to restore themselves in the green and gold.
Equally, Andrews may have had a disappointing Super 12 and Otto may have missed a significant portion of it through injury, but as a pair they were so good in Europe they must be first choices to lock the scrum.
The front row is a different matter. As against Scotland, Garvey and Willie Meyer should divide the game between them at tight-head, for it is an onerous enough task to accommodate two men rather than one in these days of allowable substitutions.
But the injuries at hooker and loose- head will exercise Mallett’s mind more than most of his decisions.
Naka Drotske was on the bench against Scotland and for the sake of continuity he should have first bite of the cherry ahead of Chris Rossouw.
Ollie le Roux scored two fabulous tries against the Crusaders and he should be given the opportunity to erase the memory of his only Springbok cap, against England at Loftus Versfeld in 1994.
He told me, “I was only 21 then and the England tight-head Victor Ubogu gave me a real working over. But I think I’m a better player than that now and I just hope Mr Mallett will give me a chance.”
The chances are good, Ollie, as are the chances that Mr Mallett will eschew the knee-jerk reaction favoured by some of his predecessors and select not the flavours of the month, but a team of lasting quality of which we can all be proud.
ENDS