When South Africa began the 2006 Tri-Nations they succumbed to a humiliating 49-0 defeat to Australia in Brisbane. Three months later they beat the same team 24-16 at Ellis Park. In between, the press, the public and his own employer vilified the coach.
Indeed, it is likely that the difference between Jake White taking the Springboks to next year’s World Cup and signing on for some cozy sinecure in Europe can be measured by the one-point margin of victory over New Zealand in Rustenburg.
In the wake of last week’s rather more impressive victory, White and his captain, John Smit, were quick to assume the moral high ground. We were assured that the team had always believed it could turn things around and that there was no great change in tactical thinking between Brisbane and Johannesburg. This is, of course, hogwash.
For one thing, there was a vast change in personnel between the two sides in question. Eight changes and two positional switches in the starting 15 and four on the bench added up to about a 70% churn. Even so, if the replacement players bore any resemblance to their predecessors it might be possible to argue that not much had really changed other than the team’s ability to implement that much-maligned beast, the game plan. This is, of course, hogwash.
White and Smit can argue until they are blue in the face about the effect on team line-ups of injuries sustained and injuries recovered from, but that cannot explain the massive change in overall philosophy. Put simply, the team that won at Ellis Park wanted to play; the one that lost in Brisbane wanted to tackle.
When did White’s brave new world begin to go pear-shaped? Perhaps it was sometime on the tour to Europe last year when the happy corollary between the rush defence and intercept tries became too important to the overall dynamic of the team. They began to believe that the value of phase play had been overrated and that turnover ball was the true Holy Grail.
And so we arrived at the point where no one wanted to carry the ball and everyone wanted to kick it. It was a little ironic that this mindset arrived just as the Springboks took their set-piece play to new levels.
Consequently, we were treated to the sight of the Springbok scrum and line-out delivering ball on silver platters, surrounded by parsley, which the backs gratefully kicked straight to the opposition.
Was it coincidence that the great ”fetcher debate” arose at the same time? The Boks had no one willing to get his hands dirty at the breakdown, so the Richie McCaws, Phil Waughs and George Smiths got away scot-free at the ruck. It would all have been different, said White’s critics, if he had had the sense to pick Luke Watson.
But it wouldn’t have been. In the Springbok team that went on tour at the beginning of the Tri-Nations, any ball that Watson might have delivered would simply have been kicked away.
As ever, it took ultimate adversity to change things. It took four successive defeats and an hour of All Black supremacy at Loftus Versfeld for the coach to try something new.
He took off his talisman, Percy Montgomery, and replaced him with a scrumhalf who had never played fullback, Ruan Pienaar. He also removed a plainly bewildered Butch James and restored Andre Pretorius at flyhalf.
In the end, that’s all it took: The introduction of two players who had been divorced from the team dynamic long enough to refuse to buy into a sterile system. Pretorius galvanised the midfield and Pienaar ran the ball back at the bemused All Blacks. The game was still lost heavily enough, but those 20 minutes may yet prove to be the ones that won the World Cup.
Still, White wasn’t sure, and it took him another week to persuade himself of the possibility that attack remains the best form of defence. Rather than admit that he was going to pick 20-year-old JP Pietersen at fullback for Ellis Park, he named him as one of two new additions to the squad from the Sharks. The other, Brent Russell, was sent home when White agreed to bite the bullet.
And on Saturday the crowd and most of the watching public seemed convinced Pietersen was going to have a bad day. When he knocked on a high ball and AJ Venter foolishly picked it up, conceding a penalty in the process, you could hear the groans from Phalaborwa to Piketberg. Too risky, they sighed, as though Johan Heunis and Andre Joubert caught everything that came their way.
Ultimately, Pietersen won over the critics and White’s Springboks were successfully reinvented over the course of a desperately demoralising tournament. They have thrown off their conservative shackles and can look to the future in hope rather than fear. Funny what can be achieved when you’re at your wits’ end.