Boks must play brain game
15 Jul 2009
South Africa will not win the 2009 Tri-Nations if they adopt the high-risk approach that saw them self-destruct in 2008, writes Gavin Rich in SA Rugby magazine.
The standing of the Tri-Nations as the world’s premier international rugby competition, and the challenges faced by the competing teams, was neatly summed up in an interview that former British & Irish Lions great Gareth Edwards did with a London newspaper.
Edwards, rated the greatest rugby player of last century, travelled to Cape Town for a Tri-Nations game in 2005 – and the brutality of it left him feeling quite stunned.
‘After the bashing the Lions received in 2005 I travelled together with the Cardiff chief executive Bob Norster to watch the All Blacks take on the Springboks,’ recalled Edwards. ‘We had left New Zealand after the Lions tour thinking that the All Blacks were the greatest team on Earth and we wondered who was ever going to beat them. Well, in Cape Town that day the Springboks knocked lumps off them. To say the Boks lacked skill would be an injustice, but the Boks really walloped them. Tana Umaga was knocked off his feet, Dan Carter did not know what day it was. To be there in the flesh was almost frightening. I can’t see a British team doing that too often.’
In relating his experience of that Newlands match, Edwards was also pointing to the one element of Springbok rugby that has remained such a key to their challenge throughout the 88 years of fierce rivalry between these powerful rugby nations. In a word: physicality.
To say it was missing from the games between the Boks and the All Blacks in last year’s Tri-Nations would not be accurate. At stages of the tournament the Boks were as physical as ever, and they scored a historic win in Dunedin playing a structured, aggressive game that could have been right out of Jake White’s playbook.
However, those were the days when new coach Peter de Villiers was giving a lot of air to his love of the expansive game. The net result was that, as they did many times during the course of the year, the Boks flitted between playing styles – and they didn’t play to their core strength. Yes, they were physical in all their games against the All Blacks, but they weren’t nearly as direct as they needed to be when the two sides clashed in Cape Town.
For reasons only known to themselves, or to their coach, the Boks took onto the field that day a strategy that could only be described as suicide. Instead of setting play up through the forwards and creating a platform by hitting the advantage line, the Boks ran the ball down the back – and their run-from-everywhere approach copped them an embarrassing 19-0 defeat.
That was the lowlight of the season, but the malaise had set in during the previous match in Perth. Just a week after their epic win in Dunedin, the Boks started as favourites against a Wallabies team playing for the first time in a Tri-Nations match under new coach Robbie Deans.
Instead of taking the good from Dunedin into this game, the Boks abandoned the template. De Villiers telegraphed his intentions to run more by bringing back Conrad Jantjes for Percy Montgomery, who had been steadiness personified at Carisbrook.
Instead of playing the structured rugby that had earned them their first win over the All Blacks on New Zealand soil since 1998, the Boks embarked on the policy that ran them into a blind corner at Newlands. The Wallabies had started tentatively, but the Boks allowed them off the hook by playing away from the South African traditional strengths.
‘To me the big disappointment of last year was not so much that we finished last on the Tri-Nations log, but that we finished the New Zealand leg with one win each, and yet we did not build on that platform,’ admits Bok assistant coach Gary Gold.
One former Bok who watched the world champions getting handed a rugby lesson during their penultimate Tri-Nations match in Durban was Mark Andrews. That was the day when the Boks were booed from the field afterwards, and were booed again by patrons in the King’s Park parking area as their bus left the stadium.
‘When I spoke to some of the people involved, such as [assistant coach] Dick Muir, it was stressed that it wasn’t supposed to be as disorganised as it appeared, the players did go onto the field with structure in mind,’ says Andrews. ‘But it was evident to me that if there was a structure, the players didn’t understand that structure and were battling to get to grips with it. You could make that out when someone like [lock] Andries Bekker ended up taking three balls at flyhalf. The players simply didn’t appear to know where the play was going.’
This makes sense, for De Villiers used to talk the heads-up approach, with the Bok mantra being ‘we’ll play what‘s in front of us’. There have been some high-ranking coaches down the years who have believed in this policy, but can you tally those who have been consistently successful, and more particularly, won trophies? I thought not.
‘You don’t want to be too rigid in your structure, but in my years as a Bok we always seemed to struggle when we had coaches who took on board a philosophy that moved away from structure. I am thinking parts of the Harry Viljoen era, and Carel du Plessis,’ recalls Andrews. ‘In the successful years, such as in 1995 when we won the World Cup and in 1998 when we won the Tri-Nations, we built our success around the physicality and dominance of our forwards. We took on strategies that would ensure that our bigger forwards would always be on the front foot, and we would set up our play through the pack.
‘Last year, in those early Tri-Nations games, we looked like we were trying to set up play through our backs, from behind the advantage line, something that has never worked for the Boks. When we feed the backs we need to be at the gainline or across it. We need to have the opposing defences back on their heels, and bring the forwards in behind, with the ball in front of them.’
For Andrews, as well as another former Bok in Brendan Venter, the selection of the squad will be the key to the chances of South African success in this year’s Tri-Nations.
‘You have to have the players that will suit the game, and vice versa,’ says Andrews.
Venter explains what is needed by holding out one hand and then letting his second fall into place on top of it, all the fingers interlinking.
‘You can’t go out and play a certain type of game if you don’t have the players to do it, or the skill levels required, or if the players are just not used to it,’ says Venter. ‘Everything has to fit together. The combinations have to fit one another, the game plan has to suit the combinations you have and the individual players you have. There are reasons why South African teams tend to be more successful when they adopt a more direct approach, but we keep making the mistake of moving away from this.’
Last year there were some oddities in selection. And even when the right selection was made, there were times when the game plan didn’t appear to suit the player selected.
An excellent example of this was the aforementioned Newlands match. When Fourie du Preez was recalled ahead of Ricky Januarie at scrumhalf it was assumed that the Boks would use his gifted kicking boot to play the territory game. As one official said on the eve of that game, ‘When you pick a guy who can kick from his team’s own 22 to the opposition 22 and he is a scrumhalf, it would be idiotic not to use him to do that.’
Yet the Boks hardly kicked in that game. They ran from everywhere, were repeatedly caught in their own half, and although the player could hardly be blamed, as by then the Boks were forced into playing catch-up, the try that the New Zealanders scored when Jean de Villiers passed to one of them near the Bok line summed up the match.
Du Preez did not look comfortable playing that game, and the Boks, particularly Butch James, were far more effective when they returned to traditional strengths against the Wallabies in the final match. Unfortunately, by then all the pretty birds had flown, and the Boks were playing only for pride.
‘I was encouraged by the fact that after the Durban game against Australia we did seem to return to proper Test rugby, so maybe the penny dropped. I certainly hope so,’ says Andrews. ‘The three matches on the end-of-year tour were encouraging, so hopefully we will stick to that. If we don’t, we could be in as much trouble in this Tri-Nations as we were last year. The one big potential problem that is easy to pinpoint is goal kicking. Like it or not, Test rugby is about kicking your goals, and we don’t have an 80% kicker like we did when we had Percy [Montgomery] playing.
‘I would also like to see the Boks make greater use of the drop goal as a source of keeping the scoreboard ticking. On our home grounds the firm surfaces encourage drop kicking. For a forward who has been throwing everything into defending, there is nothing more demoralising than the opposition sticking over a drop. I have a good recollection of the England faces when Jannie de Beer did it to them in the 1999 World Cup.’
Even if the Boks do bring the structure and levelness to their game that was missing last season, they may find themselves up against better opposition than they encountered in 2008. The Wallabies have lost lock Dan Vickerman, flank Rocky Elsom and Mark Gerrard since last year’s Tri-Nations, but this will be their second year with Deans as coach.
The big question mark over the All Blacks centres on Dan Carter. The ace flyhalf – such a key player in that Cape Town victory last year and the crucial element in New Zealand’s switch to more pragmatic rugby halfway through last season – is unlikely to play.
While the bulk of last year’s players will be back, and there hasn’t been quite the same loss of personnel to the north as there was immediately after the World Cup, Carter was, with skipper Richie McCaw, one of the few really special players in the All Blacks’ line-up. Without him they might lose a bit more of the aura that they appeared to be missing before the Boks and Wallabies let them off the hook at the start of the last Tri-Nations.
The Boks will have to hit the tournament running this year, as the home leg comes first. They will require a minimum of two wins from their matches in Bloemfontein, Durban and Cape Town if they are to be competitive when the show moves to Australasia, where Perth, Brisbane and Hamilton are their ports of call.
– This article first appeared in the July issue of SA Rugby magazine.
596 Comments
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15 Jul 2009, 21:49 pm
#493 Jinx: Dis bitter koud hier bo in Gautengeleng boeta…. sommer 6-duim koud !
Ons pee so bietjies-bietjies soos resiesperde !
15 Jul 2009, 21:51 pm
#488 cab:
F#ck I’m laughing. My worst…those patchwork lummy jackets. Nooooooo! I’m picturing Andre Watson’s wardrobe.
15 Jul 2009, 21:52 pm
#496 grootblousmile:
hahahahahahahahahahaaaaa!
15 Jul 2009, 21:53 pm
Evening girls.
15 Jul 2009, 21:53 pm
#496 grootblousmile:
We’re cold but not 6 duim koud. Jeez…
15 Jul 2009, 21:54 pm
#496 grootblousmile: We all know that Ses Duim is your average woody boet.
15 Jul 2009, 21:54 pm
#499 SodaJoe:
Uncle Soda…howzeeeeet.
15 Jul 2009, 21:55 pm
#496 grootblousmile: Blues Brother is there a Night Owls Code for 3 Nations SBru?
15 Jul 2009, 21:55 pm
#498 Jinx: Jy moenie lag nie… dis julle vuil Kaapse weer wat nou hiernatoe geskuiwe het……… flok !
Net heelwat minder nat…
Donner, ek het pics gesien van die vloede daar in Camps Bay en Observatory………. grote griet !
15 Jul 2009, 21:57 pm
#502 Jinx: Hello boet.
So my wife and I just drove across from Minnesota through North Dakota in to Montana and down and across to Idaho. Then came back via Wyoming and South Dakota.
Now we are not “Road-Trip” people, but this was a amazing. HUUUUGE country. Beautiful.
And still lagging with you wife after 3 days driving – each way – was cool too.
15 Jul 2009, 21:57 pm
#503 SodaJoe: There is but jou can let a beautiful girl tie me up and taunt me if I knew what the code was…. wait let me find out…. hehehe
Try clamjoke
15 Jul 2009, 21:59 pm
#506 grootblousmile: Stop playing with the drie duim, you know ses duim is the max.
Actually a got a vier duim reading about being tied up.
Dankie.
15 Jul 2009, 22:00 pm
#504 grootblousmile:
Hardcore. Camps Bay was like Venice in Italy. Looked like floating buildings. Nature is king and we need reminding that we are little nothings in the big scheme of things. It pissed down like clouds on a mutha-load of vengeance. Like Vinny Jones says at the end of that movie…Lock stock and two Smoking Barrels…”It was emotional!”
15 Jul 2009, 22:01 pm
#508 Jinx: Wow. Makes a change for everyone not laughing at my weather.
15 Jul 2009, 22:01 pm
Ooops…”it’s been emotional”
15 Jul 2009, 22:03 pm
#505 SodaJoe:
What a trip through old Injun country.
15 Jul 2009, 22:06 pm
#511 Jinx: It’s probably a good thing that my hoss is a Range Rover …
I am struggling to come to grip with Currie Cup. What’s the level of interest in SA?
15 Jul 2009, 22:07 pm
What’s going on with Keo lately……… as dead as a dodo at night…
15 Jul 2009, 22:09 pm
#512 SodaJoe:
Is your Range Rover named Crazy Horse? You’d enter North Dakota with some respect.
15 Jul 2009, 22:10 pm
#512 SodaJoe:
not a tow truck?
15 Jul 2009, 22:11 pm
#513 grootblousmile:
The cycles of life.
What can I say. People need a break I guess. I hardly come on to the blog at night. Sometimes just a quick raid and then gone.
15 Jul 2009, 22:14 pm
#512 SodaJoe:
I watched WP last week but the CC is a little bit weak now that the big guns are not there. But one has to choose your Sat experience carefully. Too much rugby can make you mal. NZ vs Oz will be interesting this weekend as will WP vs Bulls.
15 Jul 2009, 22:17 pm
#514 Jinx: #515 gunther: I have a Crazy Woman (must be to marry me). No Crazy Horse. (Although I did go to the monument).
I went to Deadwood and got dronk on cheap whisky. Does that count for respect? (Hopefully all of you have watched one of the greatest TV series ever)
Howzit Gunther.
15 Jul 2009, 22:18 pm
#513 grootblousmile: Kind of nice not to have a war zone though.
15 Jul 2009, 22:19 pm
Climb into my machine so we can cruise on out
I know a swingin’ little joint where we can jump and shout
It’s not too far back off the highway, not so long a ride
You park your car out in the open, you can walk inside
A little cutie takes your hat and you can thank her, ma’am
Every time you make the scene you find the joint is jammed
Oh Carol, don’t let him steal your heart away
I’m gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day
15 Jul 2009, 22:19 pm
#517 Jinx: I am struggling with All Blacks vs Australia.
I think Deans is building a formidable unit. But to beat NZ at home is very very hard. Your thoughts? Blues Brother?
15 Jul 2009, 22:20 pm
Is Carol in the house?
15 Jul 2009, 22:23 pm
#521 SodaJoe:
NZ will take OZ on Saturday narrowly.
Its even stevens this year in the Tri Nations but beware of OZ. In say that the Tri nations will be won by a bonus point. It’s tight. Can’t wait.
15 Jul 2009, 22:24 pm
#505 SodaJoe:
sounds like a great trip, some pretty country by the sounds of it, one can do a cattle drive through montana which i’ve always fancied.
15 Jul 2009, 22:28 pm
#518 SodaJoe:
Bless you for going to the Crazy Horse memorial.
I see we have a Kiwi called Wakanathan on Keo. Interesting as the word Wakan in Lakota Sioux means “Holy”.
Wakan Tanka is the name the Lakota Sioux give to The Creator. It means, “The Big Holy”
15 Jul 2009, 22:28 pm
#524 cab: Howzit boet. I think you would like it. Not sure about a cattle drive, I don’t really like horses myself (I’m a bit bangat of horses).
The space and light is beautiful. You miss a lot when you fly – almost 3/4 of America at least is my guess.
How’s life?
15 Jul 2009, 22:31 pm
How about this for being out of touch:
‘I would also like to see the Boks make greater use of the drop goal as a source of keeping the scoreboard ticking.
This is supposedly coming from somebody that is knowledgeable about the modern game… and who gets paid as a supposed expert.. I think he should thank aprtheid for giving the opportunity to become a sportswriter…he would have been a big fkall otherwise…like Simon
15 Jul 2009, 22:31 pm
#523 Jinx: That’s where my head is at too.
Crazy Horse Monument will be giant and dramatic, but Crazy Horse lives in the mountains, rivers and trees. Much bigger than the monument.
7 Circles of Life boet. Do it for the Seventh Generation.
15 Jul 2009, 22:31 pm
#526 SodaJoe:
yeah, but you got to get on a horse if you wanna do the cowboy thing, cowboys dont cry, come on how hard can it be?
Yes some of those states you drove through sound very pretty, you will also have to drive to new england in the ‘fall’ as they call it.
Huge bladdy country that.
15 Jul 2009, 22:32 pm
#524 cab:
Frank Zappa has a song on the album Overnite Sensation called …Moving to Montana.
Classic song…it goes…” Moving to Montana soon, going to be a dental floss tycoon…”
The late Mr. Zappa was beautifully wacky and could seriously play a geet.
15 Jul 2009, 22:32 pm
#517 Jinx: Ohhhhhhh, so that’s why I’m so dilly… been watching ALL the ruggas I can find…. hehehe
#521 SodaJoe: I’m struggling with NZ vs Ozzmob as well…. although the All Blacks have not fired on all cylinders one can never write them off in NZ.
Will be interesting, for sure.
15 Jul 2009, 22:35 pm
#530 Jinx: Yeah and David Byrne has a cool song called Cowboy Mambo.
I am more of a David Byrne cowboy I think.
But I can see Frank riding a horse backwards.
Best guitarist ever in the Mother’s of Invention was Lowell George (for a short while) who founded Little Feat (and THAT was band fellas).
So who will play flyhalf for the Boks? Methinks Ruan.
15 Jul 2009, 22:36 pm
#531 grootblousmile:
Blacks will be up for it in Auckland.
15 Jul 2009, 22:36 pm
#530 Jinx:
hehe … you really do know all the US artists backwards, think some of those you mention could be really good, you live over there a while? I like the sounds of CCR, thats what america feels to me at its free best.
15 Jul 2009, 22:36 pm
#531 grootblousmile: Yup, this is a really really close 3N. We have the players, Aussies have the coach and NZ have the Black jersey.
Flok as someone I know would say.
15 Jul 2009, 22:38 pm
#534 cab: CCR for sure. Springsteen for urban cowboys. This on could run and run.
15 Jul 2009, 22:38 pm
#532 SodaJoe: Soda Hi my man….Check out the thread from last nite….Skop and Robzim at there best….i almost choked on my tea,,,,,skop on about NAZI SHARKS…..hilarious stuff….seriously havent laughed so much in years!!!
We need a 3 and to make our mind up about who plays 10 !!
And if f steyn gets injured we in kak boet!
15 Jul 2009, 22:38 pm
#535 SodaJoe: OK… but say you is going to happen at Fortress Roftus on Saturday afternoon ?
Flok !
15 Jul 2009, 22:39 pm
#532 SodaJoe:
Dont start with the guitarists, you’ll get Ou Doos going…
15 Jul 2009, 22:40 pm
see you all through the window. be well.
15 Jul 2009, 22:41 pm
#532 SodaJoe:
Geez, you know your ****. Impressed. Lowell George played for Uncle Frank for a while. You can hear him on the album WEASELS RIP MY FLESH. That song… “My Guitar wants to kill your mama”. ( Real Zappa title)
Aaargh and then he started Little Feat. A band from Atlanta. OOOOOOOOOOH they cooked with huuuuuuge gas. Lowell sadly died at 29 years old.
15 Jul 2009, 22:41 pm
#532 SodaJoe:
Thought lowell was the oke who spotted canals on mars, mind u me brain is addled in beerjuice.
15 Jul 2009, 22:43 pm
#534 cab:
You have integrity and the willingness to endure my boetie. John Fogerty of CCR was the king of simplicity. He came from Oklahoma.
15 Jul 2009, 22:45 pm
#539 cab:
Hey, who is Ou Doos? I’m just a tree with a leathery heart?
15 Jul 2009, 22:46 pm
#538 grootblousmile:
It’s a WEEPEE ding. That’s the way that it goes. Just a feeling from this “neutral”. hahahahahahaaa!
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