Looking at yesterday - despite the comments to the contrary Goosen made a major difference in the performance of the Springbok team - giving a clear indication of what was wrong in the Morne Steyn era as Springbok flyhalf. In that respect whilst Morne was flyhalf the Springbok backline became a joke. If you were playing at wing the chances are that through a whole game you would never see a ball ever through a full backline movement.
Morne - a thorough gentlemen - had been coached into becoming a sterile flyhalf - I am sure it was not his intention ever, but that he was forced by coaches to play the way he did. On the other hand Morne was never really a natural ball player. The coaches felt that Morne was invaluable to the Springbok team - because of his accurate goal kicking.
The issue actually precede the Morne erea by many years. When Carel Du Plessis became the Springbok coach in 1997 - he lamented the fact the Springboks did not score enough tries and started building up and coaching a team that could score tries and use the backline in particular properly. However, his efforts were only partially suiccessful - since he was a coach for only a few months. The players themselves had to adjust to a different playing style and that took some time. Surprisingly the Springboks did start to score tries - especially in respect of the Lions tour that year. Carel started to coach the Springboks effectively only after the Super 12 series that year and he then had to take a throuroughly poor team to play in the test series against the British Lions. They lost to the Lions by 7 points in Cape Town and after that the changed approach started to bear fruit. In the match in Durban - the Springboks scored three tries - but Honiball failed with each conversion attempt and also missed two penalty kicks at goal. Like happened in Dunedin the Lions won as a result of missed kicks at goal - they were actually a much better team on the day - as is evidenced by the fact that the British Lions converted 5 penalty kicks and a drop goal. However that was followed by the biggest win ever by the Springboks ahainst the Lions - the result being 35-12. Thereafter the Springboks had to meet the Australians in Pretoria beating them 62-22.
Mallett took over and proceeded with what Carel started to do - however agter 18 moinths he had to start changing the team and was clueless as to bring in new blood into the team. After that backline play went into serious decline and remained so until the White era - when he brought in Eddie Jones to try and cure the disease of poor backline play. They achieved some successes and as an exmple it can be mentioned that the test against the POMS at Stade d'France against the POMS was won by 33-0. However, after the WC campaign the backline play started to go down again. After the departure of White - the public screamed to get Morne Steyn in the team becaue of his prolific goalscoring record. That resulted in basically dead backline - which remained in place until yesterday.
Morne basically had no real ball sense and could not read game situation basically.. Standing deep in the pocket was Morne;s method to decide what to do. His first inclination was to kick the ball and passing to the no 12 was normally decided upon if for some reason kicking was undesirable. The result was that attacking bckline play was completely out of the question and that was the fact of life throughout the Morne era.
That brought me to the situation and what happened yesterday. Goosen did not do anything special - he just played his natural game of either attacking the gain line himself or to pass the ball quicker. Kicking was a rarity and relieving kicks was done by the scrummie - not the flyhalf. The result was there for all to see - for th first time in nearly four years we saw a functioning back line and it is to De Villiers credit that he became a full participant in that change.
It is obvious that both the Manager and the captain will downplay the importance of Goosen iinsofar as the hanged style of play is concerned - but in reality without Goosen we would not have seen the change in backline play we saw yesterday. It has one main attribute - games may be won through goal kicks - but the more important component is scoring of tries and conversion thereof. . Yesterday the Springboks scored five tries and the need for gaolkicking really was not that important. That does not mean that goalkicking is not important - it is, but it should not be the only criteria for selection - there are other more imnportant criteeria tht should betaken into account.
I am in fact delighted that the Morne era is a thing of the past.
