Andy Capostagno Rugby World Cup
As opening games go, South Africa’s match against Scotland at Murrayfield on Sunday looms as a considerably easier task than the corresponding fixture against Australia in Cape Town in 1995. But that is where the simplicity ends.
Kitch Christie’s team was expected to lose against a demonstrably more talented Wallaby outfit. Nick Mallett’s team is expected to win against the Five Nations champions, in front of a fiercely partisan home crowd, with the likely scenario of cats and dogs falling from the heavens. No wonder he has been talking up the opposition.
Against the Wallabies, Christie’s team famously prevailed against the odds, but in 1994 his was the first Springbok side since readmission to play Scotland at Murrayfield. It was the first Test of the tour and there was much debate as to who would prevail on the day. The debate was fuelled by the fact that the two teams seemed to have spent the best part of the 20th century avoiding each other.
Sunday’s match will be just the 12th between the two since hostilities began in 1906. To put that into perspective, when England beat the Scots 24-21 at Twickenham in February this year, it was the 116th time the teams had met at international level. The Scotland/South Africa ratio has actually improved since readmission, with three matches in four years, as opposed to eight in 88 years prior to that.
So form is largely an irrelevance. The Scots may be the Five Nations champions, but the manner in which they lost 31-22 to Argentina last month suggested that the bookmakers were right to make them rank outsiders to win the World Cup. However, the playmakers on the outside, Gregor Townsend and John Leslie, were both absent that day, so maybe an early season aberration can be forgiven.
Equally, while South Africa come into the match with an abysmal Tri-Nations showing behind them, Murrayfield has been a lucky ground for them since readmission. Christie’s team won 34-10 in 1994 and Mallett’s teams have won 68-10 and 35-10 in Edinburgh.
And to add credibility to South Africa’s chances on Sunday, Christie’s team were as uncertain of their own pedigree before the match in 1994 as Mallett’s team is now. Two Tests into his reign, Christie was not entirely certain who his best scrumhalf was.
His preference was for Transvaal’s Johan Roux, but he was unfit and missed the British tour. Natal’s Kevin Putt was fancied to make his Test debut against the Scots, given that his New Zealand background brought with it superb tactical kicking and a thorough knowledge of how to play in wet conditions.
In the event the weather stayed dry and there was a brace of great tries from Joost van der Westhuizen, the first of Christie’s World Cup winners to ink his name into all subsequent Tests for which he was available. Now Van der Westhuizen returns as captain and some may say that the wheel has turned full circle.
In 1994 his name was largely unknown outside of South Africa, as was his preference for breaking to the left off the scrum. So there was no one there to stop him skating 30m down the left-hand touchline to score his first try. Equally his ability to remain unmolested at close quarters was not public knowledge, and his ducking and diving second try through a pile of bodies was regarded as the act of a superhuman.
Maybe it was.
That is how far Van der Westhuizen’s game has come, but now he faces his greatest challenge. In the 1995 World Cup final he had fit, focused and talented players around him in all areas. In such circumstances the man who cannot raise his game to its highest level probably doesn’t belong in the side.
This time around it is a somewhat different scenario. Van der Westhuizen leads a team which has significant areas of weakness at fullback, wing, centre, eighth- man and lock. Which is not to say that entirely the wrong team has been selected, but that certain players have one last chance to prove they have what it takes to play at this level.
Take the example of Percy Montgomery. In 1997 the fullback was one of the key players in Mallett’s team which destroyed France and Scotland at their respective headquarters. Such was his confidence that he eschewed the chance of a hat- trick of tries against the Scots, instead passing the ball to James Small to score the try which took him past Danie Gerber’s Springbok try-scoring record.
The Boks scored 10 tries that day and, it could be argued, have never been the same since. The reason may well be that it was Dick Muir’s last Test before a neck injury forced him into retirement. With Muir running the midfield, the likes of Montgomery, Pieter Rossouw and Andr Snyman were constantly being put into space when already running at full tilt.
Since Muir left the scene the backline has been waging war by standing flat, a tactic which may stop a certain number of tries by the opposition, but has the same unfortunate effect on Springbok fortunes. So it was interesting to hear what Brendan Venter, the man charged with resuscitating the ailing backline from inside centre, had to say this week.
“The most important thing is that the supporting players have to give themselves more depth on the ball carrier. In typical South African conditions the ball gets caught and flicked on in one movement. In the wet, the ball has to be caught by bringing it into the body so that you lessen the chance of dropping it. The player waiting for the pass must adjust his timing otherwise he will overrun the ball carrier”.
All of which should be written down and pasted on the bedroom mirror of every Springbok in the days ahead of the Scotland game. In essence the message must be that the ball is a precious commodity which should not be given up lightly, particularly in the sodden conditions likely to prevail on Sunday.
So where are the Scots in the equation? Do they fear defeat? Probably not, for it would give them a pathway, albeit one including an extra play-off game, with every match at Murrayfield until the semi-finals, should they continue to win.
The team which does not fear defeat is a dangerous one, as the Springboks are likely to discover on Sunday. But South Africa have a superior pack and an infinitely more gifted halfback combination. Keep the ball within those confines and victory should arrive as a matter of course.