By Gavin Rich of Supersport
So here we are again in that familiar place where we are reflecting on a poor Springbok performance, just one game after one of their finest.
It’s a bit like Nelspruit all over again, only on that occasion the Boks did manage to escape with a win and there were only seven days between the sharp performance in Durban and the hapless one at the Mbombela Stadium. This time there were five weeks.
For me that is the heart of the problem, though obviously not all of it. Yes, the Boks were on the training field for part of those five weeks away, but then in the off-season players spend time on the training field and still have to play a warm-up game before the Super Rugby season starts to eliminate the rust.
Playing in a game is different to training, and while three weeks you can probably get away with, five weeks may just be too long to be away without it having some impact. The overseas based players, who were only reintroduced to the squad in the week building up to the Dublin game, plus Handre Pollard, were the only ones to have had any match time since the win over the All Blacks at Ellis Park.
Subsequent to Ellis Park, the All Blacks haven’t gone more than two weeks without playing together. They played the Wallabies in the third Bledisloe Cup game a fortnight after the Johannesburg game, and the USA in Chicago two weeks after that. The Wallabies played the Bledisloe game and then, one week before their opening international match of the tour against Wales, they played the Barbarians.
We will never know of course, and I wouldn’t want to take anything away from the Irish passion and commitment that won them the game at Aviva, but I wouldn’t imagine the Boks would have lost in Dublin had the individual players seen some match action at some stage over the past five weeks.
There shouldn’t be too much hysteria to the Dublin post-mortems for it was not as if the Boks were played off the park, even if the final scoreline might have suggested it. They lost the game because they didn’t take their opportunities in the first half, and when Ireland gets a sniff, they grow an extra arm and leg.
The reason they didn’t score the points when they should have was two-fold, and yes, the first of them was their own doing. I was with those who pulled their hair out in frustration when skipper Jean de Villiers elected to kick kickable penalties to touch during the southern hemisphere international season. It didn’t end up costing the Boks against Argentina in Pretoria and Australia in Cape Town, but it did in Dublin.
If the Boks had gone to the break slightly ahead or even on level terms, it would have doused some of the drive in those gutsy, tenacious Irish hearts. In the northern hemisphere you have to kick for posts when the opportunity presents itself, finished and klaar.
The second aspect that kept the Boks from scoring points was the absence of the big C. When you talk about champion teams you invariably refer to a team that is clinical in executing and finishing, and the Boks were far from that against Ireland. That was the rust speaking, and it cost them on the day.
Yet, while the rest period granted the contracted Boks worked against them in Dublin, those who might want to criticise coach Heyneke Meyer for it should look at the intention, and consider the possible long term benefits of keeping the players out of the Currie Cup.
Springbok players have frequently in the past arrived at the start of a World Cup year broken down because of the non-stop treadmill of rugby (NO central contracting - Oz have lighter schedule), and while the All Blacks and Australians won their opening games, maybe it is the South Africans who will feel the benefit at the start of 2015 of not having played over these past five weeks.
A look back at the South African history of competing in World Cup suggests that coaches have to be prepared to take a hit, or make a sacrifice, on the northern hemisphere tour that ends the preceding year. Nick Mallett would agree now that had he found a way to rest key players on the 1998 tour, he would probably not have had to go into the 1999 World Cup year with doubts over the fitness of Gary Teichmann and with ace flyhalf Henry Honiball constantly crocked.
Mallett didn’t take the hit, he played his top team in all the tour matches, and by the time they played their last game against England, the players were out on their feet. They carried that fatigue into the following year.
The one coach who was prepared to take the hit was Jake White in 2006. His employers conveniently forgot the agreement once the tour opened with a 32-15 defeat in Dublin, and he was called home to explain himself during the trip, but he sent a largely second string squad on the November tour. His team lost two of the three games and it nearly cost him his job, but the pay-off was victory in the World Cup 11 months later.
Maybe this most recent Dublin defeat was the hit that Meyer needed to take for the long term purpose of winning the World Cup. He would have known that resting the players for five weeks was a risk, but the sacrifice, which in this instance was the loss of his unbeaten record in the northern hemisphere, will be worth it if it pays off in 2015.
Take a look at the stats Moz produced and rusty or not the Boks are very good.
My big concern re the England game is that we have two forwards - matfiled and oupa who are not test quality. You can dominate we ak packs like the abs and Irish but you could come unstuck against England.
Meyer cant seem to cut the apron strings with wee matfiled 106 kg. When will we be rid of the show pony! He must drop oupa and start with Schalk burger. Schalk is so obviously rearing to go.
