The unpredictable French are first up on the menu for the Springboks this year
Andy Capostagno
It seems a lifetime ago, but it is in fact only eight years and two weeks since France and South Africa last locked horns at Ellis Park. In those far-off days Springbok coach Ian McIntosh’s most frequently expressed concern was to find a flanker who could win ball at the tail of the lineout. To that end he selected 35-year-old Deon Lotter, an amiable Transvaaler who answered to the lineout call of “Oupa”.
In the time since then evening Test matches have become commonplace thanks to the demands of television, but in 1993 the Springboks had never before played an international game under lights. Theo van Rensburg’s injury-time penalty kick dipped under the crossbar and France won the match and the series by a single point, making it statistically the closest-fought Test series yet played.
Springbok rugby has come a long way since that July day in 1993. Macintosh was a coach who did not have selectorial control, who was vilified for selecting Francois Pienaar as captain ahead of Tiaan Strauss and who was under the merciless spotlight of being the first Springbok coach never to have played for the Springboks.
By contrast Harry Viljoen’s job is a bed of roses. He has virtual carte blanche from the South African Rugby Football Union to pick whomever he pleases and to appoint as many advisers as he sees fit. He has assembled a squad with an enviable blend of youth and experience and he is up against a French team that is undergoing a radical overhaul.
In the circumstances anything other than a convincing Springbok win on Saturday might be considered a failure, which only goes to show that rugby may have changed in eight years, but the pressures on the coach are just as great.
Viljoen has made a number of brave choices in his first home Test in charge. The bravest of all is to place the lion’s share of the decision-making in the hands of a 23-year-old hooker and a 21-year-old flyhalf.
For John Smit it is not really a problem. The Sharks hooker has 10 Tests behind him and he has matured into a world-class talent. He has clearly learned an immense amount about the art of hooking, especially from one of his Shark and Bok predecessors, John Allan. Having begun as a prop Smit says he is happy to fill in if needed, but that one of the pleasures of playing hooker is, “You don’t get half as sore as you do playing prop.”
Smit is the finished article, but Butch James is a different kettle of fish. Viljoen is asking a callow youth to make the step up from provincial to Test rugby, to take 10 minutes to adjust and then to run the game. Not just to experience the match, but to dominate it. It is a huge gamble and for its sheer effrontery it deserves to work.
Fortunately for Viljoen and South Africa James is up to the task. When he first came on the scene he seemed a little one-dimensional: a strongly built basher who looked more like an inside centre than a flyhalf. Times have changed.
To see James at training this week was to understand the old saw: if you’re good enough you’re old enough. He has a habit of standing around with his arms dangling by his side, looking about as dangerous as a fillet of fish. Throw him a ball, or try and run at him, however, and he turns into a piranha.
There is not a nervous bone in his body and in the unlikely event that he should have a bad game on Saturday it will not prey on his mind.
James’s defensive steel gives an almost impregnable air to the Springboks in midfield. Joost van der Westhuizen, James, Japie Mulder and De Wet Barry will knock over anything that moves, so the French are likely to be throwing a lot of skip passes on Saturday, in an attempt to take the midfield out of the game. Will it work? Not on your Nellie.
A French journalist remarked this week that while Viljoen was handing out books to his players filled with moves to be studied, his opposite number Bernard Laporte is the kind of coach who still believes you can win a Test match with ideas worked out on a kitchen table.
Logic tells us that the French have no chance. They flew in on Monday for a Saturday game, with a squad missing several key players and promptly set up camp in Cape Town, despite the fact that the second Test is in Durban. They expect to cheat the effects of altitude and beat a Springbok team that has spent three weeks together honing skills and team spirit. They must be mad.
And of course, they are, which is why they have a chance. Sports journalists tend to be a dogmatic lot, fond of playing devil’s advocate, fonder still of an even money sure thing. But for those of us who were at Twickenham in 1999 to watch the most amazing game of Test rugby yet played, writing off the French is just not an option.
If you wanted a distillation of what commitment really means, it was Fabien Galthie wrapping his puny body around Jonah Lomu and commanding him to stop. If you wanted to understand why rugby union is about so much more than brute strength, watching tiny Christophe Dominici make monkeys out of ponderous All Blacks was as good as it gets.
Breyton Paulse may take a while to work out what’s different on Saturday. When the light bulb goes on in the head he will realise that for the first time in his Test career he will be marking a man smaller than himself. Dominici stands just 1,72m tall, a full 5cm shorter than Paulse.
But if that is like a throwback to the past Viljoen has insisted on maintaining modern standards on the left wing where Dean Hall, all 1,85m and 101kg of him, will make his Test debut.
Perhaps aware of the huge disparity between his two wings, Viljoen said: “I think you’ll see a new Dean Hall, one who can run into spaces as well as into faces.”
Like the Springbok wingers, Saturday’s game will be a meeting of opposites. A slick and powerful Bok side will attempt to run in straight lines through a sea of blue-shirted romantic fools. If nothing else it promises to be fun and that’s not a bad way to start the international season.