Placement: Both Faf de Klerk (above) and Manie Libbok missed crucial kicks during the Rugby World Cup match against Ireland last week. Photo: Christian Liewig/Corbis/Getty Images
As a result of losing 13-8 to Ireland in Paris on Saturday night, the Springboks are now in the unfamiliar position of having questions asked of them. Before the Ireland defeat they were in the comfortable position of proposing to the tournament. Now things are subtly different.
If they deemed a seven-one forwards-backs split on the bench was the way to go, it was clearly a tactical master-stroke.
If it was advisable to let Faf de Klerk to get a brief run against Romania at fly-half, so be it, the decision was all part of the grand vision. So, too, was the decision to give Deon Fourie a run at hooker against Romania, a position he took up against Ireland as one of a raft of second-half substitutes. Problem is, for all his worth as a scavenging flank, Fourie is not a hooker, as his skeef late second-half throw against Ireland showed.
Are South Africa getting a touch too cute? Is the World Cup now proposing to them?
When Steven Kitshoff was substituted against Ireland, the camera followed him off. What it showed was a mild but perceptible gesture of annoyance. Kitshoff clearly wanted to stay on, you could almost hear the proverbial clicking of his tongue thousands of kilometres away, but the game-plan needed him to come off. And so the good-natured Stormers man obliged, to mutter under his breath from the twilight of the touchline.
Jacques Nienaber and Rassie Erasmus would presumably argue that a player never wants to come off, so it’s beholden upon coaches to make the decision for him. But you rather feel for Kitshoff. He’s a groot meneer of the Bok pack, recently signed for Ulster, not to swell his bank balance but to see that his parents are comfortable in their retirement.
Kitshoff’s move to Ulster (where he joins the grootbaas of the 2019 World Cup win, Duane Vermeulen) raises the additionally uncomfortable question of whether these Boks aren’t getting long in the tooth. It has been said they are the oldest side in the tournament. Might a likely quarter-final clash against a younger France be a bridge too far?
We are, truth to tell, only asking such questions because of the Ireland defeat. Bok fans will always ask such questions and, although some of them might, as it were, be a trifle Irish, it’s also important to remind ourselves that this was South Africa’s match to lose. Ireland are a high-tempo side, and they only once found their rhythm in a manner in which scoring seemed inevitable. The Irish scrum was rocked early in the second half when the “Bomb Squad” parachuted on and, for the first 20 minutes, the Ireland line-out was as shambolic as Empire Road at rush hour during load-shedding.
South Africa had their chances. Had Jesse Kriel’s heavy-handed pass not hit Siya Kolisi on the shoulder South Africa would have scored a first-half try, and let’s not talk about Manie Libbok’s and De Klerk’s place-kicking. In a match more for purists than promiscuous browsers flipping through the channels, such things were the difference between defeat and victory.
De Klerk might be South Africa’s favourite rugby player in a flag-themed Speedo, but his place-kicking against Ireland was pathologically optimistic. It also looked desperate.
Behind for much of the last 20 minutes of the first-half, the Boks were only in front for an instant before Sexton kicked Ireland ahead to make it 10-8.
This was unfamiliar territory for the Boks. No-one likes chasing the game and the ability to do so successfully is what separates the good teams from the championship-winning ones. There were times as the game progressed (and they remained behind) where the Boks looked anxious, which says much, in turn, for Ireland’s power and resolve.
South Africa play Tonga in Marseille on Sunday, while Pool B concludes six days later when Ireland play Scotland. Tonga should provide the Boks with no more than an opportunity for a romp and a run for Handré Pollard. We can expect Ireland to beat the Scots. They did so 32-21, four tries to two, in late February in the Six Nations and it will be extremely surprising if they didn’t do so again.
If this comes to pass, they will top the group, setting up a mid-October quarter-final clash with the All Blacks, while South Africa confront their date with destiny against France.
Yes, it’s going to be trickier than ordering from a French menu in a restaurant with a couple of Michelin stars, but the Bok management will take heart from the fact that when the two teams met in Paris last year, the Springboks rocked the French despite losing 30-26. The South Africans had Pieter-Steph du Toit red-carded early but payed with desperate intensity despite being down to 14 men for much of the match. They will need similar self-belief (and a touch more composure than they showed against Ireland) if they are to prevail against a team who have been building for this World Cup since it was they, and not South Africa or Ireland, who were awarded the World Cup five years ago.
The Tonga match, therefore, takes on added significance, because it’s the last opportunity to tinker at fly-half. Libbok didn’t kick well against Ireland, but neither did De Klerk.
The Springbok management has decided the solution is to start Pollard against Tonga and — when he’s put in a good shift — likely haul him off for Libbok. Perhaps it’s not the fair thing to do. The fair thing to do would be to field Libbok, because Libbok is the man in possession. But these are serious times — serious enough to throw decency out of the window.
Pollard is short of game-time, true, but he’s also a World Cup winner and you need players with big cojones when it comes to the business end of the tournament. You also need to someone to go head-to-head with the Gallic metronome, Thomas Ramos, the French full-back, who can slot them over from pretty much anywhere on the paddock.
None of this quite compares to the ignominy faced by Wallaby coach, Eddie Jones, after the Wallabies were trounced 40-6 by Wales on Sunday night. Jones believed that Quade Cooper, Len Ikitau and Michael Hooper weren’t pulling their weight, so dropped them for his World Cup squad. It might have been prudent to change things after the World Cup, but Jones is your maverick’s maverick: that’s not his way.
He spoke in a movingly candid press conference before the Wales disaster of his belief in the players he’d chosen. He also re-iterated, in his amused contempt for the journalists before him, that he took full responsibility for Australia’s poor results. He spoke of “the drug” that is coaching, and that he could have been a high-school teacher instead. He would have picked up his packed lunch from the missus, he explained, taught six periods, come home, washed the car and the dog, before watching a bit of telly and heading for bed. Instead he became a rugby coach.
Little did Jones know in the presser that he was describing his future rather than an imagined past. That’s pathos for you. Thousands won’t, but I feel sorry for him.
Luke Alfred is a seasoned South African sports journalist.