I have tried to make this point, now Rich finally gets it, even if some on this Board still think we can ‘protect the brand’ by not playing:
That old cliche about successful rugby being the product of learning from mistakes and then applying those lessons has been true of this year’s Six Nations and sent out a warning that the Springboks can’t afford to be out of action for much longer.
The Rugby World Cup champions haven’t played since they won the 2019 final at Yokohama Stadium in Japan, a period now of nearly 17 months. Their next scheduled fixtures are the three to be played against the British and Irish Lions in South Africa in mid-year. The warm-up fixtures that have been speculated on in the media haven’t been finalised.
The chances are becoming stronger that the Lions series will be played in the United Kingdom and Ireland, with four tests mooted instead of three. If that comes to pass it won’t be a popular decision as it’s hard to find anyone in rugby, regardless of where they come from, who disagrees with the comments made by former British and Irish Lions captain Willie John McBride a few weeks ago: A Lions tour is not a Lions tour if it doesn’t happen in South Africa.
But there are financial considerations that these days all too often override traditions and, to put it bluntly, what rugby people really want - for a start most rugby people appear to be in favour of the reinstatement of the old long international tours but that won’t happen - and if it is a case of needing the Lions tour to happen in the UK for SA Rugby to survive, then it’s hard to argue.
COMPETITORS GETTING AHEAD BECAUSE THEY PLAYING
What is obvious from watching the Six Nations is not only that the Lions, because they have been playing international rugby during a year when the Springboks have been inactive, will start the series as overwhelming favourites regardless of where the series is played, but that the other nations are stealing a march on them when it comes to the build-up to World Cup 2023.
And the team that provides the best reference to why that is must be 2019 runners up, England. Up until this past weekend’s game against France, it appeared that Eddie Jones’ experience of losing the World Cup final to Rassie Erasmus’ Springboks had prompted him to become more conservative.
The perception was that the Boks won the Holy Grail of rugby by playing safety first rugby, and for a long time last year, before the suspension of play due to the coronavirus, it appeared it wasn’t just England who were trying to copy what they thought was the Bok template.
Even the New Zealand teams in Super Rugby, both in the initial phase of the competition that was abbreviated and in their own internal competition after rugby returned, appeared to be working on prioritising the areas that it was felt were the Bok strengths in Japan.
England though was the most obvious example just because they took it to such an extreme. When they played the Autumn Cup last November, England had become the “boring, boring England” that they were back in the early 1990s. Forgotten was the fact that they reached the World Cup final because of a performance against New Zealand in the semi-final that was pretty total and all-encompassing in the way it was put together.
HEEDING A WAKE-UP CALL
They remained “boring, boring England” when they headed into the current Six Nations at the start of February, but then came the wake-up call - and it came quickly. Scotland, under Gregor Townsend, remain an inventive and adventurous team and it probably just isn’t in that nation’s rugby DNA to go the conservative route.
It wasn’t by much on the scoreboard in the end, but the more adventurous Scots were by far the better team as they opened their Six Nations campaign with a win at Twickenham that broke a long drought when it comes to away wins for them against England.
Defeat to Wales followed, admittedly in a game where some rather deplorable TMO/refereeing decisions were contributing factors, and suddenly England were up against the wall and written off. France, although they hadn’t won in London in almost two decades, arrived for this past weekend’s game as favourites.
They were the antithesis of England in terms of their allround game in the early phases of competition, and the expectation ahead of Twickenham and ‘Le Crunch’ was that it would be France who’d do all the playing.
It looked like it was going to go according to expectation when France scored their early try, but for the rest of the first half and into the second England showed they had internalised the lessons and learned from their mistakes. They were a different team when it came to their approach, and the commentators remarked that England were playing like France had been previously.
There were other aspects where England had adjusted, not just in playing style. The meticulous Jones had addressed the problem of the England discipline, and the slew of penalties conceded against Wales, by calling in world rated English referee Wayne Barnes to help during the fortnight building up the French game.
It worked, for although England did concede a few penalties in the second half, their discipline for most of the first 50 minutes had become exemplary. And their captain Owen Farrell had cleaned up his act too when it came to communicating with the referee, something that Jones had also highlighted after the Wales game.
The upshot was that while France still showed enough to suggest the smart money should be on them to be strong challengers for the World Cup when it is hosted on their soil in 2023, England were a transformed team and scored a deserved win. They’d learned and internalised lessons and evolved in a way that you can only do by playing.
That is something the Boks are missing out on as we go into the second year of the four year World Cup cycle building up to France 2023. While it is true that analysis is such a crucial part of the modern game, and as the games of the various teams have evolved so it would have been picked up by SA national director of rugby Erasmus and Bok coach Jacques Nienaber, there is nothing to beat the experience of making the mistakes yourself and then learning from them.
The more the other nations play and the South Africans don’t the bigger the gap there may be that will have to be made up in the build-up to the defence of the trophy won in such thrilling fashion nearly a year and a half ago.
