Jake White should have savoured the past six days. When he looks back on his career as Springbok coach it may turn out to have been the only time when the opposition coach was under more pressure than he. It is a nice irony, too, that White has spent the last week in the Georgian City of Bath, where England coach Andy Robinson once played his rugby.
Robinson was an open-side flank forward for Bath in the club’s greatest period, the 1980s. He took over the position from Roger Spurrell, a shaggy-haired eccentric who seemed to positively relish putting his head where everyone else liked to put their feet. Robinson was a more cerebral player, but during a run of seven successive defeats as England coach, he must now know what Spurrell’s head felt like most Monday mornings.
Robinson has been given two weeks to turn things around or face the festive season as a member of England’s least exclusive club, the unemployed. The two weeks in question will be spent in the company of the Springboks. Now you can understand why White should have enjoyed his stay in Bath.
For one thing he has plenty of video evidence pinpointing England’s many weaknesses. Their tight five is nowhere near the dominant force it was in 2003 and their back row is one-paced and one-dimensional. The only trouble is, you could say exactly the same thing about the Springboks.
The difference between the two sides, it seems, is that Robinson is doing his best to pick his strongest team, while White is doing his damnedest not to. The cupboard in England is bare. Jonny Wilkinson is injured again and Martin Johnson, Richard Hill and Neil Back have all retired. There are no replacements for those players.
By contrast South Africa is chock-full of outrageous talent, so much so that White chose to leave his trump cards at home to rest ahead of 2007. But when he lost Pedrie Wannenburg in pre-tour training he chose not to replace him and when Juan Smith pulled up lame following last week’s defeat by Ireland he stuck his head in the sand.
What the Boks missed more than anything else in Dublin was a ball-chasing flank capable of winning possession on the ground and slowing down opposition ball. In the absence of that player Ireland feasted on turnover ball and used it to punish Springbok naiveté.
It doesn’t matter whether you prefer Luke Watson or Kabamba Floors, but with a touring squad down to three fit loose forwards and the conundrum that is Danie Rossouw, White should have swallowed his pride and fetched a fetcher.
Ironically, he admitted this week to having spoken on the phone to Rassie Erasmus following the Dublin implosion. Five years ago Erasmus the player would have been the answer to the Springbok coach’s problems, but troublesome feet forced him out of the game prematurely.
It would have been interesting to listen to Erasmus’s thoughts. Might he have said: ”I’ve got a lad here in the Free State who could do a job for you, but right now he’s captaining the SA Sevens team because you say he’s too small.”
Size has become a problem for White. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, White has allowed size to become a problem. His insistence on bench-pressing and muscle-building has given him a captain 10kg over his fighting weight and an unhealthy obsession with lineout domination.
With five excellent lineout options against Ireland, John Smit struggled to find his jumpers, and not only because of the howling wind. On the occasions when the link worked, the intended driving mauls were stopped in their tracks by clever Irish defenders who managed to convince referee Paul Honiss that they were doing nothing wrong.
Once the maul had been collapsed, Irish hands smuggled the ball away and sent it to the delightful centre partnership of Gordon D’Arcy and Brian O’Driscoll. Much has been written about the defensive frailties of their opposite numbers, Jean de Villiers and Bryan Habana, but it began and ended with the inability to secure set-piece ball.
White’s game needs a platform to work from and he has admitted more than once that the lineout is far more important than the scrum in this regard. Shorn of that platform, as the Boks were in Brisbane against Australia earlier this year, and in Dublin last week, they look like Grecian statues: wonderful physical specimens incapable of significant movement.
Repeat this mantra: Pierre Spies is not an eighth man and Danie Rossouw is a lock. Get that right and a few of White’s other eccentricities can be countenanced. Sadly, this Saturday’s selection looks a lot like a knee-jerk reaction. Spies is back at flank where he belongs, but he’ll have to do an awful lot of running to camouflage the other seven pedestrians up front.
Having refused to face the issue of the pack, White’s pointless tinkering in the backs looks utterly irrelevant. This side will have to play miles above itself to beat a desperate England.