Rudolf Straeuli’s time in charge of the Springboks has reached the sudden death stage. If rumours are to be believed (and since that’s about all that emanates from SA Rugby these days some credence should be given to them) Straeuli’s troubled reign will end if South Africa finish worse than third at Rugby World Cup 2003.
First up it’s Samoa at the Suncorp stadium in Brisbane. Win that and the long-anticipated quarterfinal with New Zealand looms into view. Win that and not only will this Springbok team have a chance at immortality, but the view of Straeuli’s time in charge of the national side will undergo a complete transformation.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Samoa comes first, and after their majestic display against England several issues must be confronted. First and foremost, this is a team that does not deserve to be damned with faint praise.
Coaches John Boe and Michael Jones took a group of players from various parts of the globe and, without money or resources, moulded them into a team that came within 10 minutes of beating the best.
Compare what Samoa achieved against England with South Africa’s performance against the same opponents and you’ll understand why the sound of knocking knees has been heard at Springbok training sessions this week.
Consider the vastly different game plans. The Springboks took on the English tight five and planned to kick them to death with penalties from the boot of Louis Koen. They got the first part right, but the second went horribly wrong.
Samoa’s tight five got demobilised, but their back row was majestic, the backs broke tackles galore and everyone ran straight. Oh, and flyhalf Earl Va’a kicked and exercised his options in the kind of nerveless manner that Koen can only dream about.
The question being asked is whether Samoa’s players can raise themselves to that level of performance for two weeks in a row. It’s an interesting question, but probably the wrong one. More pertinent is, can South Africa raise themselves beyond the level they achieved against England. Because if they don’t their tournament is over.
To that end Straeuli has made the necessary change at flyhalf, replacing Koen with Derick Hougaard. Better late than never, they say, but has the sea change in thinking about the flyhalf position by Straeuli’s coaching team come too late in this instance?
There is a persistent rumour (there’s that word again) that Hougaard’s lowly status in the estimation of the coaching team goes back to his arrival at the Bulls training camp in January. He apparently pitched up about 9kg over his fighting weight and for his cavalier attitude to his new profession Hougaard was shown the door by Bulls coach Rudy Joubert.
The beneficiary of this punishment was a certain flyhalf who had been deemed surplus to requirements by the Cats and moved across the Jukskei in the hope of a place on the bench. That was how Koen got on to the Springbok radar screen this year. The fact that the Bulls went on to finish halfway up the Super 12 log, together with a slew of injuries among the other principal contenders for the number 10 shirt, eased Koen’s passage back into the big time.
It should have been a temporary fix, but instead it turned into a runaway train and a man who is not among the best half-dozen flyhalves in South Africa got to control his country’s destiny at the World Cup. Now Koen is where he belongs on the bench, and Hougaard, with 10 minutes against England and 80 against Georgia under his belt, is tasked with masterminding the defeat of Samoa. That’s some task.
To put it into perspective it’s instructive to look back at the quarterfinal contested by these two sides at the 1995 World Cup. The Springboks duly won 42-14, with four of their six tries coming from Chester Williams, who was playing his first game of the tournament after recovering from injury.
The collateral damage was heavy, however, with Ruben Kruger (shoulder), Mark Andrews (rib), Kobus Wiese (knee) and Andre Joubert (hand) all being replaced during the course of the match. The Samoans charged around giving late tackles with stiff arms all over the place, and Mike Umaga (elder brother of All Black Tana) was later banned for 60 days for his role in the thuggery.
It is probably fair to say that South African referee Jonathan Kaplan erred on the side of leniency with Samoa in last week’s game, ignoring a few late hits and allowing them to live offside at the breakdowns. But it is also fair to say that this team, denuded as it is of several big-name players unable to secure releases from their British club sides, is capable of playing a far more structured and cerebral game than its 1995 counterpart.
And ultimately that’s what the Springboks will have to face up to. The time has gone when victory against Samoa would simply arrive as they faded in the final quarter and the referee got fed up with their spoiling. The only way to beat this Samoan team, as England discovered, is to match them for 80 minutes. Anything less and there’ll be a bottle of whisky and a loaded revolver in Straeuli’s name in the departure lounge at Sydney airport.