Rudolf Straeuli’s reaction to South Africa’s performance against France last week is typical of the man. No conciliatory talk about processes and the difficulties of end-of-season tours, just a frank admission that it wasn’t good enough, followed by a swinging axe.
You know where you stand with Straeuli. He has no favourites. Even the five who survived the cut ahead of this week’s match against Scotland are aware that they too would probably be in the dog box if there had been more than 26 players on tour.
There is no shame in losing to a better side, but for an hour in Marseilles the Springboks looked as though they were in a contested training session rather than a full blown Test match.
They were fortunate in the extreme that for much of those 60 minutes the French seemed to buy into the same concept, otherwise the record score line would have been even more embarrassingly one sided.
It was not difficult to see where the problem lay, and the rate of attrition in the front row bore testimony to the fact that France, not England, have the strongest pack in world rugby.
It is, of course, unlucky to lose both your tight head and loose head props to injury, but luck has nothing to do with the inability to perform the basics.
In the years before his private life became more newsworthy than his rugby, James Dalton was regarded as a fine player in the loose, but a poor scrummager and downright appal-ling lineout thrower. He owed his place in the side more to the lack of a viable alternative than to any exceptional ability. Nothing has changed.
It is all well and good to criticise (as a few ex-Springboks have) the lineout jumping of Bakkies Botha and Jannes Labuschagne, but they have to have something to jump for in the first place. Given that the game plan seemed to require far more tactical kicking from Andre Pretorius than usual, it must be assumed that the Boks expected to win their own lineout ball and at least compete for France’s. But Dalton threw his first three attempts straight to France and that set the tone for the night.
The question to be asked is whether such a humiliating defeat counts for anything? Critics and players worldwide have noted the stirring beast of South African rugby and suggested that sooner rather than later Straeuli will have moulded an exceptional side. They cannot all be wrong.
Pre-tour Straeuli said that all 26 players would get a start in at least one Test and it was not difficult to guess that something close to a second team would take the field against Scotland. Is Straeuli therefore playing mind games in coming down so heavily on the team that lost to France?
Yes and no. Yes, he is angry about the poor display in Marseilles and no, he doesn’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Injuries notwithstanding, Straeuli wants to be able to pick from the whole squad for the final match of tour against England at Twickenham. It therefore makes all the sense in the world to have a look at a few combinations in the relatively gentle confines of Murrayfield.
Straeuli will be hoping that Bolla Conradie, in particular, chooses this match to emulate his great predecessor, Joost van der Westhuizen, who announced himself to the world at Murrayfield in 1994 with two wonder-ful tries.
In the same game Straeuli himself scored a try from a perfectly constructed move and suddenly the grim Springboks that Britain remembered from the days before isolation were replaced with smiling, sidestepping wraiths. Is it too much to ask for more of the same, please?