The Springboks embark on their end-of-year tour without the excuse that they’re in a rebuilding phase
Andy Capostagno
The itinerary may include Genoa and Houston, but the Springbok tour of 2001 can hardly be called a trip into the unknown. If anything, the players and management know rather too much about what to expect from a tour lasting five weeks and including four Tests on successive Saturdays.
They know that the team’s ability will be tested to the full against France and England, that Italy will provide a pleasing diversion and that there could never be a more interesting time to visit the United States.
Beyond that, the hard core of the side has had a year to absorb the methods of coach Harry Viljoen. And, given that Viljoen has adopted something of a horses-for-courses policy in his squad selection, it might be argued that by the end of the tour we will know whether the Springboks are potential world beaters or the rather one-dimensional plodders that they seemed during much of this year’s seven Tests.
In 1994 Kitch Christie took the Boks to Britain and Ireland in similar circumstances. Under Christie’s predecessor, Ian McIntosh, they had lost a series in New Zealand and drawn one with England. Christie made some bold selections for his first two Tests in charge against Argentina and set off for Britain with no great fanfare.
The team spluttered along until it reached Swansea, where the club champions of Wales were put to the sword in such a manner that it became instantly clear that, if nothing else, Christie had the players capable of winning the 1995 World Cup.
Next year is not a World Cup year and while Viljoen has made some questionable choices of personnel this year, he is to be commended for accepting the fact that this tour is about winning, not building for 2003. To that end he has selected Braam van Straaten to play at flyhalf and kick goals, with Louis Koen as his back-up in case of emergency.
He has done this after belatedly accepting the fact that goal kickers win Test matches. And on that basis, when the Bankfin player of the year award was handed to Andre Vos on Tuesday night, a goodly number of the audience must have wondered what Van Straaten had to do to win. For in the course of 2001 he went from zero to hero and transformed the Springboks into a team capable of beating the world champions.
For all that Vos has done, and for the dignity with which he accepted his demotion from the captaincy, he was made to look a pygmy in the face of Van Straaten’s achievements. That fact was not lost on Viljoen who, after fooling around with the 15-man game, apparently accepted that there is nothing morally wrong with beating a team through forward power and a kicking flyhalf.
He said this week: “We want to take our game a step further, specifically on attack. Our pack of forwards hasn’t been dynamic enough. I want more ‘go forward’ from them and we need to put more pressure on the opposition defence by creating more options and having more skill in our phase play. It’s taken longer than what I thought, but I saw good signs in the last couple of Currie Cup games and the plan basically is to create more pressure on defences by keeping the ball longer.”
More specifically, Viljoen referred to the first Test against France in Paris on November 10. He said: “The most important factor for us on this tour is to play well against France and beat them.”
Many of the squad know how difficult it is to do that. In June they lost 32-23 to the Tricolours at Ellis Park and while the series was saved in Durban, it would not have taken too much from the French to reverse the 20-15 score line. And, it might be added, they did it not with the traditional French flair, but with a mighty pack and a kicking flyhalf.
So Viljoen knows what his team has to do and a few of his players should be wide awake to mortality too. A combination of accumulated injuries, age and wage politics mean that this tour could be the last for players such as Mark Andrews, Andre Venter and Joost van der Westhuizen. In the circumstances, this tour is less of an ongoing process (to use the coach’s favourite expression) and more of a culmination, for whatever happens, come June 2002 Viljoen will have to start all over again.