Andy Capostagno rugby It would be tempting to believe that South Africa’s entire post-season tour had been building up to Saturday’s encounter with England at Twickenham. The Springboks played 7s rugby against Argentina and barely deserved last-gasp victories in colourless encounters with Ireland and Wales. All utterly irrelevant as long as England are beaten.
But that would be to suggest that there had been steady improvement in the Springbok displays hitherto, and that would be wrong. Improvements there have been; Joost van der Westhuizen has thrown off the shackles of injury and is back to something near his best, Andre Vos has made significant strides as a Test match number eight and Corne Krige gets better with every game.
But as to structure, basic skills, a workable backline defence and a Test-class tight five, the Boks have been treading water and fighting fires, if that’s not mixing metaphors too seriously, all tour. Against teams with several pieces missing from the puzzle themselves, South Africa have held their own. Against England they may find the quantum leap needed a bridge too far. Oops, there go those metaphors again.
The management might like to believe that instead of being the fourth Test of the tour, this is the third Test of a series that currently stands at 1-1. South Africa beat England 18-13 in Pretoria on June 17, a match that was effectively decided by the decision of TV referee Mark Lawrence, that Tim Stimpson had not been fouled by Vos and had also not applied downward pressure to the ball behind the Bok try line.
A week later in Bloemfontein Andre Watson gave an even more bizarre “home-town decision” by awarding Van der Westhuizen a try when he dived into a pile of bodies on the England line. But there is no stopping an idea whose time has come, and the idea that Nick Mallett’s Springboks had lost the plot, merely glimpsed at Loftus, was there for all to see at the Free State stadium as England emerged deserving 27-22 victors.
If there is a nasty omen about this Saturday’s match it must be that, while the mighty England pack survives unscathed from that which played in Bloemfontein, South Africa have only Robbie Kempson remaining from the tight-five that started the same day.
England teams down the years have placed a lot of value on continuity. They tend to find players and stick with them through thick and thin, although in the case of players such as Mike Catt it has been thin many more times than it has been thick.
Manager Clive Woodward thinks that he has a team that is ready to give someone a hiding, bluster that would be more impressive were it not for such things as a player strike, a ticket scandal and an inability to turn pressure into points in successive matches against Australia and Argentina.
What Woodward has is the best pack in world rugby and a dysfunctional backline. It may seem heresy to those who remember how he guided England to victory in Bloem, but the problem lies at flyhalf with Jonny Wilkinson. In the two recent Tests Wilkinson has been a shadow of the youngster who played so close to the gain line that in America he would have been arrested for jaywalking.
Instead he has either stood deep and kicked high balls into the opposition 22, or sent slow ball out to his runners, leaving no room for a gifted wing such as Dan Luger to ply his trade. Even the winning try against Australia demanded Luger chase rather than carry the ball over the try line.
It may be that Wilkinson is saving his A game for the Springboks and that he will inspire wave after wave of attacks on the fragile midfield defence of the visitors. It may equally be that the pack, disgruntled with the lack of interest being earned from their physical investments, won’t give him the ball to play with in the first place.
In either event the Springboks are in trouble. Harry Viljoen announced a team on Tuesday that was widely regarded as being a decoy. If Stefan Terblanche and Percy Montgomery walk out at Twickenham with the number 15 and 10 shirts on their backs respectively, we must assume that Viljoen knew something no one else did.
But it is far more likely that Monty will move back to fullback, from which position he should never have been moved, Terblanche will warm the bench in place of the sadly over-the-hill Chester Williams, and Braam van Straaten will move into the flyhalf berth he occupied for a significant amount of time against Wales, thus allowing Japie Mulder to add steel to the defence at inside centre.
Such jiggery-pokery may hold England’s attention for a while, but it will simply be akin to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic unless the pack competes properly for the ball. In the front row Willie Meyer has ploughed a heroic lone furrow, while Mark Andrews’s experience allowed him to make some remarkable tackles in far-flung places against Wales, in addition to his always immaculate set-piece play. But two men against five is just not a fair fight and Viljoen must be praying to the weather gods for a dry day and reasonably firm conditions to allow his lighter but more mobile charges a chance to compete on equal terms. South Africa can win on Saturday, but it would mean England playing particularly badly, something that is uncommon from Woodward’s rarely inspired but admirably methodical team.