This weekend the Springbok selectors will gather their squad for the last two Tri-Nations Test matches. It is widely anticipated that the so-called “Rustenburg 21” will provide the bulk of it, while a few lambs sent to the slaughter in the Antipodes will make up the numbers. The question that only time will answer is whether the Springboks have just lost a battle to win a war, or whether a bright young generation has been needlessly sacrificed by a few deluded generals.
What we still don’t know is how close the new Tri-Nations squad will be to the one that goes to the World Cup next month. Within that lies a further conundrum: how come Morné Steyn has been booked off games, but Pat Lambie has been released to play in the Currie Cup for the Sharks?
Last week coach Peter de Villiers spoke of Steyn’s “last chance” on the day the team to play New Zealand was announced. Twenty-four hours later he decided to move Steyn from flyhalf to fullback, giving Lambie his first start at international level in the number 10 jersey.
Given that Steyn, along with a number of others, was utterly anonymous against the All Blacks, while Lambie, behind a beaten pack, gave as good an account of himself as anyone on the day, a few more conspiracy theories are born.
Is the coaching team keeping Lambie out of the spotlight against the Springboks’ two biggest rivals for the Webb-Ellis trophy? Or are they buying into the theory that World Cups are won by the team with the best kicker and discounting the fact that Steyn can do little else? Are they, indeed, at this late stage planning to turn Steyn into a fullback?
Perhaps they prefer the measured approach of Morné to the scattergun tactics of his namesake, Frans, in the last line of defence.
It’s no secret that De Villiers wants Butch James to do the same job at this World Cup as he did for Jake White at the last. The likelihood is that James will play at flyhalf in the remaining two Tri-Nations fixtures. How he performs should determine whether he leapfrogs Morné Steyn and Lambie in the pecking order.
It is to be hoped that the players who have been released to their provinces know where they stand, even if the rest of us don’t. This is not the time for issue fudging; it is a time for clear heads and tactical certainty. Which is presumably why the Rustenburg 21 were gathered in the first place.
The next task for De Villiers and his aides is to find a way of taking players out of mothballs to front up against their Tri-Nations opponents. Rumour has it that the playing field may be levelled to an extent with New Zealand coach Graham Henry mulling the idea of sending his own second team on tour. Robbie Deans has mooted no such thing with the Wallabies and the way his under strength side performed in the defeat by Samoa last month should convince him that his best team is required.
But it is asking an awful lot of Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha, Jean de Villiers, Jacque Fourie and co to come out firing after playing no rugby at all for a month.
The Wallabies are first in the fixture list, in Durban next week, and a rusty Bok starting team is no way to confront the dynamic halfback partnership of Will Genia and Quade Cooper that has carried all before it this year.
Ultimately, of course, the coaching team will take a couple more defeats if they are narrow and completed without the loss of key personnel for the World Cup. And it may yet be that the controversial aspects of the recently completed tour will be hailed as visionary in the years to come. That was certainly the case in 2007, although there is no question that Jake White’s dirt trackers put up better performances than their 2011 counterparts.
The alleged difference between then and now is that White made no bones about the fitness or otherwise of his non-travelling stars. De Villiers, on the other hand, in yet another poor liaison with the press, insisted that the Rustenburg 21 were a figment of media imagination. Jurie Roux, chief executive of the South African Rugby Union was then tasked with putting out fires.
His candid response to the New Zealand media bears repeating: “Well, I would like to cut the cast off Schalk Burger’s finger, I would like Andries Bekker to not need an operation, I would like all of them to be uninjured, but they are injured and being rehabilitated, so what do you want me to do? I am not a miracle worker.”
The next two weeks will reveal all, with injuries, form, selection and tactics all in the mix. These two tests will decide whether the Springboks go to the World Cup with momentum or with a luggage allowance filled with question marks.