There are two ways to approach Saturday’s Test match against Ireland in Dublin. One way is to list the reasons a South African win is unlikely. The match takes place one week after the Currie Cup final and, in an effort to fit a quart into a pint pot, the Springbok logisticians decided to keep the squad in Johannesburg until the 11th hour, only arriving in Dublin on Thursday afternoon.
Then there is the list of unavailable players, 13 at the time of going to print, but possibly more by the time you read this. You could pick a fairly decent rugby league team from the 13: John Smit, Jaque Fourie, Wynand Olivier, Andries Bekker, Fourie du Preez, Heinrich Brüssow, JP Pietersen, Gurthrö Steenkamp, Butch James, BJ Botha, Ricky Januarie, Schalk Burger and Juan de Jongh.
Continuing on the debit side, the Springboks have endured a torrid season, their coach is entering the swinging doors of the last-chance saloon and the opening Test is against a team that has learned how to cope against South Africa.
Indeed the locals are suggesting that the Springboks will be a tasty hors d’oeuvre for the real contest on the horizon, against the All Blacks.
Against coach Peter de Villiers’s wishes, the touring side has been denuded of proved quality and experience and he has been forced into testing new combinations in an important game. He will be sending his charges down the tunnel of the new Aviva Stadium with a little more hope than belief in their ability to win.
Youthful enthusiasm and extravagant talent
It’s all rather a long way from the former Springbok coach Jake White’s unfortunate assertion, on the 2006 tour, that Ireland might have only two players good enough to play for South Africa.
Which brings us to plus side of the ledger.
By a roundabout route De Villiers has been handed a squad packed with youthful enthusiasm and extravagant talent. New captain Victor Matfield will have his hands full remembering everybody’s name and will not have time to commiserate with the rest of his jaded World Cup-winning colleagues.
There is also the small matter of the preparedness or otherwise of their hosts. After the highs of a Six Nations Grand Slam in 2009, Ireland fell back to Earth last season and endured a miserable tour in the southern hemisphere a few months back.
They lost 31-28 against New Zealand Maori and then by a record score against the All Blacks, before losing a game they should have won against Australia.
The talismanic captain of Ireland, Brian O’Driscoll, has been injured for a month and has been rushed back to play against the Boks. Furthermore, coach Declan Kidney has, like his South African counterpart, been wondering about whether he can afford to rest his key players ahead of the 2011 World Cup.
Kidney said this week: “It needs to be done. The economy has shown us the dangers of short-term thinking and overextending yourself. With rugby players, if you overplay them now, you’d have no players down the line and they probably wouldn’t last as long as they have. But if they don’t play enough, you don’t have any success.”
Blending a team capable of winning
That’s the conundrum in a nutshell and it underlines why De Villiers is in the happy position of not being able to call on his stars. It’s not that the uncapped players in his squad haven’t played plenty of rugby, for they have. But the likes of Patrick Lambie, Coenie Oosthuizen and Willem Alberts all have something to prove.
The difficulty that the coaching staff has to confront is blending a team capable of winning against Ireland in a few brief training sessions either side of the Equator. But isn’t that what coaches are there for? To make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear when the need arises?
It is quite possible that we will learn more about the ability of De Villiers and his staff on this tour than in the three years since he took over from White.
The South African Rugby Union is holding a gun to his head, so if he truly has the ability to lead the Boks successfully in New Zealand 10 months hence, now is the time to prove it.