Thinking outside the Boks

Pieter Rossouw has grown up. The boy who apparently made it all up as he went along is now 31 and last Saturday, as the result of a crippling injury list, he captained the Stormers to a one-point win against the Chiefs at Newlands.

In the old days coach Gert Smal might have been vilified for putting a lunatic in charge of the asylum, but times have changed and maybe Rossouw never really was a lunatic in the first place.

To be fair to ‘Slaptjips”, his fellow players and a number of coaches always held his tactical nous and game-breaking ability in high regard. It was just us non-believers in the media and a large percentage of those born north of the Hex river who didn’t get it. What we saw was the running up blind alleys, missed tackles and the preoccupation with standing in the flyhalf channel.

Alright, so he was an integral part of the most successful post-isolation side of all, the one that won the Tri-Nations in 1998 on its way to a record 17-match victory sequence. But that side had lots of great players in it and Rossouw owed his place to some muddled selectorial thinking. Or did he?

This is a World Cup year and while South Africa may be the current world champions at both under-19 and under-21 level, Springbok coach Rudolf Straeuli has made it abundantly clear that he intends to leaven a squad of youthful vigour with a few wise heads. Thirty-two-year-old Joost van der Westhuizen is playing out of his socks for the Bulls and two tries in 10 minutes from Rossouw last weekend effectively won the game for the Stormers.

Both Van der Westhuizen and Rossouw will never win a sprinting contest again, but they make up for declining pace with a much greater use of the most important muscle of all: the brain.

‘I have definitely reached the stage when it takes a lot longer to get the stiffness out of my body after a match,” said Rossouw, ‘but if Linford Christie can be the fastest man in the world at the age of 36 then I figure I haven’t got too much to worry about.

‘Anyway, I was never really a speedster, my game plan revolves around a lot of other aspects. A traditional wing who relies on his pace is finished when his pace goes, but I started as a fullback and I don’t play in a traditional way. My strong point in terms of pace is over the first 10 or 15m, which is where you break the line.”

It is difficult to initiate a conversation in English with Rossouw. He is hesitant in a second language and a brief spell in England seems to have instilled a fear of metaphor; not that he won’t use it, but that he wants to get it right, unlike the commentator (who shall remain nameless) who wanted to emphasise the pace with which a wing finished off a move, and said: ‘And he puts his ears down and goes for the line.”

My ears were pinned back by Rossouw once he started to get technical. This was clearly not the gifted but maddeningly inconsistent player of five years ago, but one who had thought deeply about his game and its connection with the team.

‘I’m trying to develop my game by working on the basics of wing play: helping the fullback, reading the flyhalf and the scrumhalf, positioning for tactical kicks, always taking the ball out of the air so you don’t put your team under pressure, taking the high ball, making the right defensive decisions; when to go in, when to stay out, when to go for the intercept, try and play the half-gaps in the second and third phases when you can run at props and locks when they’re tired.

‘It’s also important to give confidence to the players around you. I don’t want to boast about it, but maybe because I play at the back I have the ability to see how play is developing and I can give direction to the team. So obviously there’s still a lot of things I have to work on and that’s what I try to do every week when I take the field.”

There are certain things that Rossouw has always had, however. One is an uncanny ability to pull off an interception. Against the Chiefs it came in the fifth minute. Just as the Stormers seemed about to give up a try in the right corner, Rossouw came up, smuggled the ball out of the arms of Roger Randle and flew 80m downfield to score under the posts.

These things, apparently, don’t happen by accident.

‘A lot of the time intercepts come when a flyhalf or an inside centre runs too flat and tries a skip pass. It’s very difficult to play flat and wide with a skip pass and I’m always on the lookout for that, but it’s important to remember that you mustn’t miss the tackle in the attempt for an intercept. Often when I go for an intercept it’s because the opposition have got six on one and I’m really just trying to stop the try, so it’s more desperation than anything. It also has to be a surprise; you can’t do it every time, you have to read the play.

‘Last week [against the Reds] it failed. They got the turnover from our lineout and I probably shouldn’t have gone for the intercept because they ended up scoring out wide. So there are times when it doesn’t work, but I find that it’s difficult for teams to take the ball wide against a wing that comes up early and goes in. If I’m playing with a sharp fullback, he’ll come up with me and if I happen to miss the ball the fullback can hit the next guy.”

Ah, a sharp fullback. Rossouw has played with a few this year — Werner Greeff, Lean van Dyk and Leon van den Heever — but he pines for the peroxide blonde who for so long was his partner at the Stormers, Western Province and the Springboks.

‘I miss playing with Percy Montgomery. He sometimes got a lot of flak in South Africa, but he was one of the best fullbacks I’ve ever played with. He had everything — a big kick, pace and positional sense. It used to give me a lot of confidence to know that he was there and that if I needed to pass the ball under pressure he could kick it 70m downfield. We had an intuitive understanding, so we didn’t really have to talk to each other much on the field. If one of us went, we knew the other would be on our tail.”

Montgomery is now plying his trade for Newport in the Welsh league and Rossouw was also nearly lost to South African rugby late last year. He signed for London Irish in the English premiership and after an emotional farewell to the Newlands faithful got a disgruntled phone call from Straeuli.

‘Rudolf phoned me when I went overseas and said he was very unhappy because he had been given an assurance by Rob Wagner at Western Province that none of their players was leaving. I told him that I had asked Rob to keep it quiet because I didn’t want the team to be affected by the news and that, anyway, I had signed the contract with London Irish in December (2001), which was before Rudolf was appointed as Springbok coach.”

As it turned out, it was a case of au revoir rather than goodbye, for within three months Rossouw was back in Cape Town. London Irish began their season with six successive defeats and the directors of the club put pressure on coach Brendan Venter to strap on his boots again. That meant three South Africans competing for two places — the premiership allows only two overseas players per game.

‘Naka Drotske was playing brilliant rugby — he’s probably the best hooker in the premiership — and with Brendan playing, the directors realised that they would be paying me a lot of money not to play. They offered me a payout, which I took, and then I had an offer to play for Bath. We decided to go back to Cape Town to think it over and while I was there Gert [Smal] called and said they would be very happy to take me back. So here I am and even though the Stormers are struggling at the moment it’s great to be back.”

When Straeuli picks his first squad of the season it will be a major shock if Rossouw’s name is not there. He may be playing in a losing team, but that has not always been the case, and he did happen to score perhaps the best Springbok try of the post-isolation era: Springboks vs All Blacks in Wellington, 1998. A swivel between the halfbacks from an attacking scrum inside the opposition 22, Rossouw took the pop pass and scored the winning try under the posts.

‘The reason that it worked so well was that Henry Honiball had such great timing. He held the ball long enough so that Josh Kronfeld couldn’t get to me in time. So [Andrew] Mehrtens went with Joost and Henry ran back towards the scrum and that held Kronfeld in place long enough for me to run between him and Mehrtens.

‘Henry was the mastermind who came up with the move and I’ve tried it many times since, but I’ve found that there are very few flyhalves who can do it successfully. Lem had so much time on the field, you could see it from the way he defended, and if you’d ever played golf with him you’d see it there too: it’s all about timing and Henry had it.”

You might also say Rossouw has it. He’s old enough to know better and young enough to enjoy the occasion. And if you have to ask which occasion, you haven’t been paying attention.