The Springboks will have to tackle all day if they hope to stop the Todd Squad Andy Capostagno The story of the All Blacks, once a kind of Auckland Aenead, has become a Canterbury Tale. Coach Wayne Smith, captain Todd Blackadder, halfbacks Justin Marshall and Andrew Mehrtens and many more have proclaimed the Super 12 trophy as their own personal fiefdom for the past three years. Now the team they call the Todd Squad is back at Jade stadium with the Springboks in their sights. Those who remember the hype surrounding Andre Vos’s return to East London as the newly crowned Springbok captain can have no idea what lies in store for Blackadder when he steps on to the field on Saturday wearing not the red and black of Canterbury and the Crusaders, but the all black of New Zealand.
Expect dancing girls and men on horseback, expect an unashamedly chauvinist crowd, and strangest of all on these occasions, expect an extremely focused All Black team. For, while the rest of New Zealand has bought into the invincibility theory based upon last week’s defeat of Australia, Blackadder and his men know they were lucky to win.
Which is not to say that the best side lost, but that the final whistle happened to come at the right time for the All Blacks. If Andre Watson had found an extra three minutes of stoppage time from somewhere the Wallabies may well have found the inspiration to get down to the other end quickly enough for one more winning score. That’s the kind of game it was. Wayne Smith, having studied the video, has admitted to defensive frailties that allowed Australia to recover from 24-0 down inside nine minutes to 35-34 up with seven minutes to go. In other words once the Wallabies woke up they pulverised the Blacks 35-10 and, had Stephen Larkham found touch when it mattered Jonah Lomu could not have scored his winning try. So the All Blacks know they can get better and to that end Smith has made three sensible changes to his team for this Saturday’s match. Josh Kronfeld is back where he belongs on the side of the scrum, having made up for lost time when he came off the bench for the second half in Sydney.
Troy Flavell replaces Norm Maxwell at lock and, most importantly, Mark Robinson returns at the expense of Alama Ieremiah in the centre. Robinson, yet another Canterbury man, will add a touch of subtlety to the midfield combination that was missing at Stadium Australia. In fact New Zealand will be a familiar blend of power and subtlety against the Springboks. Smith has worked out how to use Lomu to best effect and, strange to say, that does not mean involving him wherever possible, but rather in playing him as a classic left wing, albeit one with the size and strength to play in the second row if required.
The man with the task of marking Lomu is Thinus Delport, shifted by coach Nick Mallett from left wing to right for that specific purpose. Breyton Paulse, the only real weapon in the Springbok armoury, will play on the left. Mallett said this week that the swap made sense because Paulse is left footed and Delport favours the right. Which makes you wonder why it should take the threat of Lomu for the coaching staff to see sense. So much of what is going on in the Springbok camp at the moment relates to first aid. It is an effort to stop the bleeding, not to cure the root cause. Having lambasted Albert van den Berg for losing his defensive sense against Australia, Mallett now finds himself in the invidious position of having to pick him anyway, because no one else is fit.
Naturally Mallett’s problems at lock, problems which involve playing Andre Venter out of position there, would have been far less dramatic if, instead of summoning Jannes Labuschagne to the Antipodes, he had made a diplomatic phone call to Mark Andrews who, according to Ian McIntosh, is fit and raring to go in Durban. Mallett would have liked to pair De Wet Barry and Japie Mulder in the midfield, but Mulder preceded Krynauw Otto on the plane home with a bicep injury that mercifully looks a lot less serious than the original diagnosis. And he would also have liked to pick Henry Honiball at flyhalf, but Henry says he is retired, despite the fact that he is likely to play some Currie Cup rugby for Natal this year. So, after the mandatory three-week stand down for concussion, it’s Braam van Straaten’s turn again in the number 10 shirt. He cannot help but suffer by comparison to Mehrtens, but at least he will shore up the midfield defence rather better than the out-of-his-depth Louis Koen.
The Springboks can win the match if they do not miss one tackle in 80 minutes and if Van Straaten kicks all his goals. The latter has more chance of coming true than the former and for that reason the Springboks are likely to return to Australia on Sunday night having lost their third successive Test match. If it were to become four in a row Mallet, Solomons et al, contracts notwithstanding, might be seeking fresh employment for August.