On Tuesday Rudolf Straeuli will name his 24-man Springbok squad for the opening Test of the season against Scotland in Durban on June 7. At the same time he will name his captain for the season, a season that includes — in case you’d forgotten — the World Cup.
Consequently the week ahead is a little like the opening of Duck Hunting Season. Most members of the fourth estate would never admit it, but what we are now engaging in is Rumour Mongering Season. It is a game based around who has the coach’s ear, who has a hotline to the key players and, inevitably, who has the most column inches to fill.
Duck Hunting Season is traditionally accompanied by a slapstick joust between Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck.
Rumour Mongering Season also has protagonists of cartoonish
demeanour, but that’s probably because some of us have been to too many absurdly well-catered press conferences. Whatever: I hereby declare my hat to be in the ring.
The first rumours to surface about the two Tests against Scotland were that Straeuli would be ”experimenting”. That’s to say, he may follow the lead of All Black coach John Mitchell, who last year picked a very different squad for the Tri-Nations from the one that played in the early-season Tests.
The problem for Straeuli is that, 11 Tests into his reign as Springbok coach, he is a long way from knowing what his best squad looks like. The squad to be announced on May 27 will inevitably be vastly different from the 22 who played in the final Test of last season. There are two reasons for that: firstly, half of that team are injured and secondly, they lost 53-3 to England.
Consider the injured first: Werner Greeff, Breyton Paulse, Friedrich Lombaard, Jannes Labuschagne, Corne Krige and Joe van Niekerk. Now consider those who played at Twickenham because of earlier injuries to others: Wessel Roux (for Lawrence Sephaka), Deon Carstens (for Willie Meyer), CJ van der Linde (for Faan Rautenbach), AJ Venter (for Victor Matfield), Norman Jordaan (for Neil de Kock) and Pedrie Wannenburg (for Bob Skinstad).
That’s 12 out of 22. A 13th, James Dalton, has mercifully retired. Over the other nine the arguments will rage. Robbie Fleck and Butch James were the centres and it can safely be assumed that they will not be again against Scotland. Andre Pretorius and Bolla Conradie have a much better chance of continuing at halfback, although a fit Joost van der Westhuizen will have to be accommodated somewhere.
The real arguments will rage around those who sat on Straeuli’s bench at Twickenham. Apart from the aforementioned Van der Linde and Jordaan, they are: Lukas van Biljon, Bakkies Botha, Marco Wentzel, Brent Russell and Adi Jacobs. Van Biljon is fresh after missing most of the Super 12, but so is John Smit (who missed all of it), while the replacement for the two at the Sharks, Gary Botha, has proved to be better than either.
Bakkies Botha has his proponents, but he is the least gifted of the Bulls trio that also includes Matfield and Geo Cronje. Marco Wentzel did nothing wrong, but a season going backwards with the Cats may count against him, together with the impression that Straeuli is a little unsure of the adaptable forward’s best position. Russell has proved himself impossible to categorise, and consequently must be the first name down on Straeuli’s bench, while Jacobs is as maddeningly poor on defence as he is wonderfully adept on attack.
Let us now add the names of those identified in this column last week, who have come through the Super 12 with enhanced reputations. They are: Gary Botha, Cobus Visagie, Geo Cronje, Piet Krause, Jaun Smith, Craig Davidson, Louis Koen, Andre Snyman and Jaco van der Westhuyzen.
None of the above nine names were part of the match 22 at Twickenham. Now let us assume that everyone is fit. That leaves us with 27, which added to our previous nine gives us 36 names, already 12 too many. Now you see why it is irrelevant to speculate about the strength of Straeuli’s early-season selection.
The coach finds himself in an invidious position. He wants continuity and form, but right now the two are mutually exclusive. Several players known to figure in Straeuli’s plans appear among these 36 names. Robbie Kempson was brought back from Ireland for the express purpose of playing in the World Cup. Gcobani Bobo, despite a largely desperate season with the Cats, has been mentioned by the coach as ”a definite”.
The problem is that in an effort to prove that everyone — even those playing outside the country — has a chance of selection, Straeuli may be casting his net too wide. He may need to take a leaf out of his mentor Kitch Christie’s book. Christie had his favourites and at the beginning of the 1995 World Cup he informed players such as Johan Roux and Gavin Johnson that they were not part of his preferred team.
Oddly enough this seemed to improve team morale and there were no complaints from Johnson, even when Andre Joubert was selected ahead of him despite having a broken hand! Christie did allow himself the luxury of changing his mind, however, as evinced by the fact that he dropped Straeuli for the semifinal and final and picked Mark Andrews out of position at eighth man