The Springboks need a new coach after losing to Ireland’s 29-15.
It is not often that a top-tier team is as comprehensively out-coached as the Springboks were by the New Zealander Joe Schmidt with his storming, fired-up and smart Ireland side at the Aviva Stadium.
Good coaching is about accurate and thoughtful selection, which Graham Henry once said was about 90 per cent of the task.
The rest of the task is giving the selected team the tactics and strategy to stop the opposition’s attacks and to launch your own so as to win the Test.
The Springboks had their selections all wrong. And because these wrong selections dictated the way they had to play, they got their tactics and strategy all wrong as well.
We come here to the issue of Victor Matfield. He is a peerless lineout jumper and stealer of the opposition’s ball, still, even though in rugby years he is past the veteran stage. But that is all Matfield is now. He is a one-trick pony. And this is a huge problem for the Springboks.
If you play Matfield you have to play an attritional rolling maul game from lineouts because this is his great trick. So the Springboks turned down a number of kickable penalties to force five-man lineout drives. They actually scored from one of these drives but several of them were thwarted.
And they were thwarted through smart thinking and coaching by Ireland. Twice Ireland backed away after a lineout, leaving the Springboks poised for the maul but not being able to make any contact with the opposition forwards. Other times Ireland successfully engaged in the hand-to-hand battle of stopping the Springboks maul from going forward.
The point here is that depowering the maul in a Matfield-Springboks side is rather like shaving the hair off Samson’s head.
Conversely, Matfield himself was unimpressive in his efforts, along with the other seven forwards, to stop Ireland when they scored a psychologically important mauling try of their own.
There is nothing new with the Springboks maul. The All Blacks have a terrific variation where they bring three of their backs into the front of lineout. This gives them the option of playing the blindside with effect if the initial drive is stopped. It also forces defenders to keep numbers out of the defensive maul to watch the blindside. This, in turn, has allowed Richie McCaw to score tries from the initial drive.
There is none of this cleverness bred from good coaching in the Springboks plays. They rely on the doctrine that might is right. And yes, on their day, especially at home, the bulk and power of the Springboks can overwhelm oppositions. They did this to Wales earlier in the year in South Africa.
This brings us to the continued selection of halfback Francois Hougaard. Has an international halfback for a major side ever played a poorer game than Hougaard against Ireland? Probably not. His passing was terrible. His option taking was invariably wrong. He made handling mistakes. His kicking was invariably ineffective. And he gave his forwards no running go-forward.
All of this is inevitable in his play. How a Springboks coach can pick someone who plays halfback rather like a chunky winger with no passing skills is beyond me.
It is obvious to anyone with any knowledge about rugby that when Hougaard is playing at halfback, the Springboks can’t have a fluent, attacking backline. The deterioration in the play of Handre Pollard is obvious. He is standing far too deep. He is kicking too much. And his running game, as a consequence, has fallen away.
One other point, Hennie le Roux is a fabulous running fullback but coach Heyneke Meyer has not put in place any systems with wingers and centres dropping back to help le Roux run back opposition kicks. Poor coaching, once again.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned on The Roar that the Springboks have to learn to win more away from home. I got roasted by True Believers. But the fact remains that the Springboks over the years have not been as strong out of Africa as the All Blacks are, say, out of New Zealand.
In my view, the Rugby World Cup 2007 victory was a special case event with the Springboks winning the tournament without playing New Zealand or Australia, both teams that had claims to having the measure of the Springboks, out of South Africa.
There is this quote from Brad Pitt in Moneyball that is relevant, I believe, “I hate losing. I hate losing more than I even want to win.’
Hating to lose works at home games where the home ground advantage can generate a tremendous emotional lift for the local side. But it is generally not as effective away from home.
Teams do best away from home when they take the game to the locals, as the Wallabies and All Blacks did last weekend (and the Springboks did not!).
As I watched the Springboks, without the benefit of good coaching, get overwhelmed by a feisty, well-coached Ireland side I wondered just what the outcome of the Test would have been if Meyer was coaching Ireland and Schmidt was coaching South Africa.
A tremendous victory to the Springboks, most likely.
Sonny Bill Williams has improved the All Blacks
The All Blacks have been a terrific team since their Rugby World Cup 2011 triumph. However, the coming of Sonny Bill Williams has improved the side immensely. What he gives to the All Blacks now is strong defence, from a back, in the middle of the field, dynamic running and stunning off-loading.
The effect of this is to harden up the All Blacks attack. With Williams back in midfield sides will no longer be able to close down the All Blacks attack (as the Wallabies and Springboks did in their last two Tests) by using a drifting defence to close down the wingers.
Williams’ holds will force the defence to stay square and static as the plays evolve, which in turn will allow more space for the All Blacks wingers and fullbacks closer to the touchlines to exploit.
I had thought that Williams would not displace Ma’a Nonu as the All Blacks starting inside centre, when both of them are available. But on the evidence of his Test against England, in particular, Williams has already gone past Nonu as the All Blacks starter at inside centre.
Steve Hansen is right when he asserts that Sonny Bill Williams is about the best back playing in world rugby right now.
The All Blacks in 2014 and presumably in 2015 are a much better side than they were in 2011. Part of this due to rise of Aaron Smith, who is the best All Blacks halfback since Dave Loveridge, and arguably now fit to be compared with Chris Laidlaw as the ultimate passing halfback.
The All Blacks scrum looked a bit wonky at times against England. But even with 14 players they had the measure of England at Twickenham. A number of missed easy shots at goal made the scoreline much closer than it really should have been.
What is happening with the top referees
Before last week’s round of matches, the odds on were Nigel Owens being the top referee at the Rugby World Cup 2015 tournament with the final being his, provided Wales was not one of the sides contesting for the Webb Ellis trophy.
But Owens had a terrible game in the England-New Zealand Test at Twickenham.
After getting the call correct on the Aaron Cruden try, despite the efforts of the television producers to get the decision over-turned, he seemed to lose confidence in his own eyes and allowed himself to be swayed by the braying of the crowd.
He went against the protocols and gave a yellow card against Dane Cole, when the TMO said this sanction was not warranted, and had another look at the Charles Faumuina’s try he had awarded when the TMO made this suggestion.
The IRB, rather predictably, has supported Owens for what he did.
But Steve Hansen is right. He is critical of producers and the TMO calling for replays after the referee has made a decision.
“TV producers are having too big a say … and I don’t think it is a positive thing for the game,” Hansen said.
Referees, he says, should be the only ones to call for replays and each team should have two challenges a Test. Quite right.
Other aspects of Owens’ refereeing were not up to standard, too. He let England get away with flooding the rucks and mauls with prone England bodies intending to slow down the All Blacks ball.
Owens needs to look at Craig Joubert, who did a terrific job in the Wales-Australia Test. Joubert gets quick ball from rucks and mauls by insisting that the tackler not impede the delivery of the ball back to the waiting halfback.
When one Welsh forward complained he couldn’t get out of the way, Jouber told him, “You shouldn’t have got in that position in the first place”.
And this is the important point. Tacklers generally have an option where they will land or fall after making a tackle. Too many of them decide to fall across the player they have tackled to prevent a quick re-cycling of the ball.
By concentrating on this simple element in the tackle and being firm in his decisions, Joubert has effectively cleaned up the complicated ruck area and allowed sides that want to play ball-in-hand rugby to have a chance to do this effectively.
Joubert is ahead of Owens in my book and hopefully (if the Springboks don’t make the Rugby World Cup 2015 final) in the IRB outlook, too. I have said it before and say it again, Joubert is the best referee in world rugby right now.
Romain Poite, another of the highly-regarded referees with Rugby World Cup final aspirations, did well in the Ireland-South Africa Test. He astonished the Springboks by stopping a rolling maul that looked like crossing Ireland’s tryline after the maul had rejected his calls of “Use it! Use it!”
I can only applaud this approach. The rolling maul makes offside play for the mauling side legal. As a way of compensating for this concession, the law says that after the first stop the ball must be released once the maul stops a second time. The Springboks often reject this call from a referee, and get away with it.
They won’t do this again with Poite, and hopefully other referees who referee the rolling maul as effectively as he does.
Wayne Barnes was typically legalistic in the Scotland-Argentina match. My main disagreement with Barnes as a top referee is that he is very quick with his whistle but his accuracy does not match his speed of decision-making.
He would be a much better referee is he let matters develop a bit more, as Glen Jackson did in the France-Fiji Test.
We will get a better look at the leading referees this round with the following Tests.
Samoa versus Canada (referee George Clancy). The Irishman Clancy is a favourite of the IRB for some reason. In my opinion, he is not in the same class as Owens, Joubert or Poite.
England versus South Africa (Steve Walsh). Walsh is something of a show pony as a referee. English rugby writers have been very critical of him, which is probably to his credit when I come to think of it. He did well in the Italy-Samoa match last weekend. It will be interesting to see whether Walsh can encourage the two most attritional teams in world rugby to play some ensemble, attractive rugby.
Italy versus Argentina (Craig Joubert). The Pumas surely can’t play as poorly and lethargicly as they did against Scotland. Italy tried to move the ball around against Samoa and look to have unearthed a decent number 10, at last, in Kelly Houmona.
Scotland versus New Zealand (Romain Poite). Vern Cotter, a New Zealander from the Crusader’s franchise, appears to have done a splendid job in revitalising Scotland. Scotland were terrific in the first half and went off the boil a bit in the second half. But the game was won by half-time.
Scotland, like Ireland, have never beaten the All Blacks. In the past, though, they have forced close encounters. A test of the improvement that has been made to the side since Cotter came in will be made over the weekend against an All Blacks side that is hitting form.
France versus Australia (Nigel Owens). The fact that Owens in successive weeks has been given England, New Zealand, Australia and France suggests to me that he is currently favoured by the IRB as their top man. But having made a bit of a hash of England-New Zealand, Owens will want to be much better at Paris.
France were quite good against Fiji at Marseilles. They don’t look to be much better, though, than they were in Australia earlier this year when the Wallabies won all three Tests in the series.
But the old adage about France is always appropriate: the outcome of the Test depends upon which French side turns up. In 2012 France defeated the Wallabies in their last home Test against them, 33-6.
Despite this, I’m predicting another Wallabies victory to go with the other two (the Barbarians and Wales) secured on this 2014 European tour.
