If there is a silver lining to last week’s 45-26 defeat by the All Blacks it is that Springbok coach Jake White has recognised the need for a total overhaul. This week’s line-up to play New Zealand near Rustenburg contains five changes and a positional switch.
If you wanted to be hypercritical you might argue that White has not been severe enough in his pruning. After his worst outing in a Springbok jersey, John Smit might have been sent back to his province to recuperate. The coach must also have been sorely tempted to get Ruan Pienaar into the starting 15, but Fourie du Preez survives and Pienaar is on the bench.
It would be wrong to read too much into South Africa’s display in the final quarter at Loftus. The All Blacks had wrapped up the game, had lost three of the starting line-up to serious injury and were beginning to suffer the effects of altitude.
Nevertheless, the introduction of André Pretorius at flyhalf and Pienaar at fullback put into sharp focus exactly what the Springboks have been missing this season. Quite why Butch James had been asked to stand deep and kick in the hour preceding Pretorius’s arrival is a mystery, but the Lions pivot brought a sense of urgency onto the field.
Standing flat and running onto the ball, Pretorius unlocked the limitless potential of Jean de Villiers and Jaque Fourie in the centre. He did it in a somewhat basic fashion, too, merely by passing the ball at opportune moments instead of hoofing it into the grateful arms of an All Black.
White might argue that he learned nothing new from Pretorius on the day. He has made no bones about the fact that had Pretorius been fit he would have played in every Test this year.
But the same cannot be said of the change wrought at fullback by Pienaar. Suddenly there was unpredictability, a sense of adventure, a willingness to join in with what was going on downfield. All this from a 22-year-old who has never played fullback.
People have been going out of their way to defend Percy Montgomery this year. Every lame display has been met with the line about the value of experience. Indeed, there have been times when White seemed more intent on building a team with a 50-caps-per-man average than he was on actually winning a game.
The bald truth of the matter is that Monty is neither tired, lacking motivation, nor passing through a dip in form: he is at the end of the road. The moment he started missing penalty kicks was the beginning of the end. Until then his place could be justified. He punished the opposition for the mistakes forced by the rush defence.
Successive coaches who accommodated Monty through a decade-long international career forgave him his many vicissitudes because of the one un-coachable thing that he brought to the party: pace. It is now long gone and White’s blinkered view of the other fullback options open to him has hopefully gone with it.
This week the coach has opted to move Jaque Fourie to fullback. It’s the position he played at school for Monument and the one he played in his first season of senior rugby for the Lions.
Yet moving him there means breaking up the best midfield combination available and therefore it’s a bad move. Nevertheless, it’s a start and it may just persuade the coach to look at other areas of his team in which change has previously been unthinkable.
Principal among these is the captain. In the modern game the hooker’s job extends to more than pushing in the scrums and throwing in at the line-out. He needs to act like a fourth loose forward, playing to the ball. This is especially true in the Springbok team post-Schalk Burger. John Smit is a fine player and an excellent diplomat, but at the moment he could be summonsed for impersonating a hooker.
It has been suggested that Smit is tired, having played almost every minute of every game for the Springboks since White assumed the coaching role two years ago.
But it should be remembered that he had an operation in December and had four months away from the game. It’s not a question of fatigue; it’s a question of attitude. After all, Os du Randt is five years older and could claim the same enervation, but he was one of the outstanding players on display at Loftus.
Win or lose this weekend, White is going to need to face some home truths before he takes the team on tour at the end of the season. He needs to accept that the team that won the Tri-Nations in 2004 has been melted down for scrap. He now needs to work on finding a phoenix to pull from the flames.