Andy Capostagno Rugby
What do you say about South Africa 96, Wales 13? It’s difficult to get a true sense of perspective when one team has scored 15 tries and yet is disappointed about not cracking the 100 barrier.
Perspective comes with distance and on Saturday I was not at Loftus Versfeld, but at the Rugby Football Union of East Africa ground in Nairobi. A group of us had assembled in front of a television to watch the Springboks at the end of the first day of the 1998 Tusker Safari Sevens.
It was an interesting contrast. On screen were some of the highest paid professional sportsmen in Africa. Watching in Nairobi were some of the least known rugby players in the dark continent who, in most cases, had paid their own way to participate in an old fashioned tournament.
Was there any envy? Were there fairy cakes? They cheered every Springbok try and lamented only one thing: that there was no South African team at the best Seven’s festival in Africa.
Botswana were there. Zambia and Uganda were there. Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Kenya were all represented. But the only green and gold shirts on display were worn by the supporters, 90% of whom were black.
The National Sports Council may be ambivalent about the Springboks, but if the teams and supporters of the Safari Sevens are anything to go by, the rest of Africa looks up to the world champions.
If the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) is really serious about developing the game in Africa, the Safari Sevens is the kind of tournament it needs to support.
And if Sarfu is really serious about developing the game in the rest of the world, it needs to see its national side give England the mother and father of a hiding at Newlands on Saturday.
Ireland have been dispatched solidly enough, Wales have been sent back to the Pleistocene epoch to contemplate the use of stone age tactics in the 20th century.
England have drawn crumbs of comfort from the fact that they only lost 40-10 in the second test against the All Blacks.
Coach Clive Woodward says that he has found more than half-a-dozen players who will be of use to England in next year’s World Cup, as if the tour of the southern hemisphere was a development project instead of a bare-faced money making exercise. Talk about being economical with the truth.
Just as South Africa need to be censured for not sending a team to Nairobi, England should not be allowed to return home in anything other than disgrace, for that is the only way their clubs will realise that international sport cannot be toyed with.
The mere suggestion that England captain Lawrence Dallaglio should eschew a visit to the southern hemisphere in order to be fit for Wasps versus Preston Grasshoppers in the Tetley Bitter Cup should set the alarm bells ringing at the International Rugby Football Board (IRB).
It is time once again to take a leaf out of the book prepared by soccer’s ruling body, the Fdration Internationale de Football Associations (Fifa), which instructs clubs that they will release their players for the national side or they will not take part in any competition held under the Fifa banner.
If such a law had been adopted by the IRB when rugby went professional in 1995, all this nonsense could have been avoided. We could have looked forward to Saturday’s match in Cape Town as a significant building block towards World Cup success for the Springboks next year.
Instead we can only regard it as yet another training exercise against hopelessly inadequate opposition and a chance to assess players in units.
The good news is that one of those assessments may lead directly to future success. Henry Honiball is back at flyhalf, which means that when the estimable Franco Smith recovers enough to move out to his favoured position at inside centre, an important triumvirate will be in place.
It is fair enough that Nick Mallett has given Pieter Muller three tests to make a claim for the number 12 jersey and Smith’s hamstring injury gives him another go. Muller has let no one down, but despite attempts at grubber and chip kicks through flat-lying defences which were previously foreign to his armoury, he is just not the man for the job.
Smith, another product of the Andr Markgraaff school of excellence, is the man for the job. He has the ability to become a legend.
The effect of the new laws has been to force fly-halves into carrying the ball far more than they used to and to force inside centres to kick and pass a lot more than they used to.
There are exceptions for genii such as Andrew Mehrtens, but effectively the squeezing of space at international level has moved authority among the backs one place further out.
There are many false dawns before a new era, but if the midfield trio of Honiball, Smith and Andr Snyman stays fit, it could be the block upon which all opposition stumbles as South Africa retains the World Cup in Wales next year.
That will only be the case, however, if the pack provides quality ball and it is filtered correctly through the hands of the scrum- half. At the moment it is difficult to understand why Joost van der Westhuizen is continually referred to as the best scrum- half in the world.
His decision-making is baffling and his
sniping runs from the base of the scrum tend to be covered quickly by opponents who know what to expect.
It was noticeable that the back-line enjoyed a lot more freedom against the Welsh after Van der Westhuizen had been replaced by Werner Swanepoel.
It should also be remembered that it was the Free Stater who was at the helm for the last three tests on the tour to Europe last year.
Van der Westhuizen must be reminded that the principal job of the scrumhalf is to clear the ball, or his international future could be limited.
This is hypercriticism where it is perhaps not needed, but to end on a positive note, there are two things which three tests against the celtic nations have revealed.
One is that there is life after Van der
Westhuizen and the other is that the successor to Dick Muir has arrived.
Mallett should be happy, and on Saturday night after his team have dispatched the English, he can celebrate for exactly as long as it takes to remind him that after the surreal experience of cutting up the children of Wales and England, real rugby, the Tri- Nations, is just around the corner.