England exposed South Africa’s lack of ambition
Andy Capostagno in Houston
When the Springboks arrived at George Bush International Airport on Sunday they were detained for three hours while each member of the squad was asked, as a precaution against the spread of foot-and-mouth, to identify his luggage and remove all the mud from the boots therein.
Onerous task though this might have been, they must have wished that they could as easily have wiped away the stain of the performance against England at Twickenham.
One phrase kept cropping up among the assembled journalists and former players of both teams at the ground: lack of ambition. The Springboks attempted a limited game plan that failed. They hoped to compete in the tight phases, kick for territory with the ball they won, tackle like demons on England’s ball and hope that pressure would turn into points through English indiscretions at the breakdown.
Most of the game plan worked in the first half and England led by just 9-6 at the break. There was even a strange kind of moral victory in the score line for the Boks. By attempting nothing and conceding just three Jonny Wilkinson penalties they had proved that England are still a long way from a great team.
But it is a fact borne out time and again at every level of the game that no team can tackle for 80 minutes and not get tired. The Boks missed 17 tackles according to the official statistics and by far the largest percentage must have come in the second half.
It is a wise captain who can spot that the tide is beginning to turn and implement plan B. Unfortunately for Bob Skinstad there was no plan B, and the second 40 minutes of this game will go down as the worst since South Africa came out of isolation.
The most telling moment came in the final quarter when coach Harry Viljoen introduced three forwards from the bench in an attempt to galvanise his team. One of them was Andre Venter, a talismanic figure in Springbok rugby over the past five years.
Venter took a crash ball on the English 22, but was tackled backwards 5m as though he were the neighbourhood geek trying to sneak past a nightclub bouncer.
The effect on his team must have been rather like that inflicted upon the Philistines when Goliath failed to make it past the first round against David.
It goes without saying that whatever happens this week in Houston is irrelevant. The players and the management admitted up front that this tour would be judged on the results against England and, to a lesser extent, France. The jury was out after Paris, but there can be no doubt now that a guilty verdict will be returned.
But guilty of what exactly? Well, principally of not learning from mistakes. When all is said and done there was not a great deal of difference in the game plan at Twickenham last year, when England won 25-17.
That result persuaded Viljoen to dispense with the services of Braam van Straaten. The need to win Test matches persuaded him to recall his ace kicker for the Tri-Nations and beyond. And it is that kind of inconsistency of selection that Viljoen cannot ultimately hide from behind the clichd talk of processes and structures.
By releasing five players for the Barbarians Viljoen has been forced to make more changes against the United States for the final match of the tour this weekend. Those changes will mean that in 11 Tests this year he has selected close to 50 players. If this were a way of getting his message out to as broad a spectrum as possible it might be defendable, but clearly it is not.
There are a plethora of excuses to hand injuries to key players, a devalued Currie Cup, too many games against good teams but the fact of the matter is that at the start of the new millennium South Africa has been relegated into the second division of rugby-playing nations.
In four short years since the last time the Springboks beat England at Twickenham they have gone from being a team who won because they were used to winning, to being a team who are not overly distressed by defeat because they have become used to it.
Which brings us to the US. The greatest hurdle the Eagles need to overcome is of playing at a consistent level for 80 minutes. They have seven full-time professionals who ply their trade abroad, but the rest of the team is made up of old-fashioned amateurs who play the game because they love it.
This squad is playing a Test against South Africa in a city of five million people that boasts just two rugby clubs. The biggest challenge is not winning, but assembling the squad from the four corners of the earth. They may not win on Saturday, but if they can remind a few jaundiced Springboks about the real reasons they took up the game in the first place, then this leg of the trip won’t have been wasted.