There was a time as little as 2 years ago that the SA players seems to be unable to pass the ball and handling mistakes were frequent. It must have driven Meyer crazy and in the end he obviously gave instructions that the ball is to be kept in hand and used - as was evident in the Ellis Park test last year. However, to instruct a flyhalf not to kick away balls aimlessly is one thing - it does not remove the responsibility of the flyhalf to kick the balls at times - so Morne made a fatal flop and passed a ball that he should have kicked and the story ended there.
The scenario changed when Willie le Roux came into the team and since then the Springbok flyhalfs and scrummies started to kick less - but still too many balls were kicked away aimlessly and often with disastrous results. However, in the end it was clear - the game had to change and that was that.
Lets look at the half back situation first.
The scrummies
The problem was this year is the injury to Fourie du Preez - he also kick fairly often - but his kicks were more strategic and at times beneficial from an attacking perspective. Howevr, he is more of an all-round scrummie.
Ruan Pienaar is basically a kicking scrummie - probably because of the NH enviromnent he has been playing in for the past four years. there were always serious questions about his availability at breakdown situations. Not an ideal selecion for the Springboks anymore.
Francois Hougaard started off very well sniping around the fringes and with a reasonabley good passing game. His one negative in that regard was his tendency to pass balls back to the forwards and while he played with Morne Steyn at flyhalf that probably was necessary. At one stage in 2012 and 2013 his kicking game was disastrously poor. In essense he has overcome that deficiency and in the last test his passing game was much better - more accurate and quicker.
Cobus Reinach is a really good all-round scrummie. He is a really good reader of games and has speed aplenty. Top class attacking ability - with a good passing game and a stronger kicking ability insofar as distance kicking is concerned. With further experience he is likely to become SA top scrummie.
The Flyhalfs
For the past three years we had mainly Morne Steyn as flyhalf. Morne has had serious deficiencies in flyhalf play. He never attacked the gain line and as a rule stood too far back in the pocket. His kicking game was problematic because of inaccuracy and aimlessness. Because of the above - the opposition defenders can drift out and when Morne in fact passed the ball - the recipient was in serious trouble wirh defenders basically on top of them. The result was the dead backline syndrome that lasted for at least 18 months after Meyer's appointment.
Another flyhalf flop was Frnacois Steyn - his problem related to inaccurate passing - skip passing when that would cut out overlaps and badly timed passing. He had the same problem as Morne Steyn insofar as his kicking game was concerned.
What is the Requirements for a passing game
* The first requirement is the aboility to read the game and make instant decisions on the best line of play to be adopted.
* The second requirement is to know that variation of plays is an essential and that the passing game is an integral part of the variations.
* An accurate passing game
* The ability to time passes
The above three is clear - the fourth one not so. The passer should create doubts in the mind of the defenders and at the same time try to judge whether the recipient would benefit from the pass. I want to give two examples of the best such passes this year:-
* The pass made by Reinach to Lambie in the Aussie test. The defenders were caught flat-footed - they did not know what to expect - and there was just a little spacxe left that was enough for Lambie to use to enable him to score the try.
* A pass made by De Allende to Carr earlier this year in a Stormers game - which put Carr in space and led to a try. Held up the ball for a second and before the defenders two meters away could guess what was happening the try wa s scored.
Summary
There are still some deficienies such as the tendency of our loosies to crashball without passing or -off-loading the ball and an apparent inability to link up with the backline to ensure a wider attacking game. Earlier on thois site reference was made to Coetzee, but there are only a rleatively limited number of loosies with real passing sckills - so that remains a problem to be dealt with by the Springboks.
