PREVIEW: Boks odd one out as southern teams restart

There’s similarity in the coaching teams that did duty at the World Cup and the playing groups are almost the same too in the Springbok/Ireland series, but that’s not the case in three series that will be played concurrently with the clash between the world’s top teams.

Rassie Erasmus has swapped his role as national director of rugby to return to the Bok head coaching role he filled in 2019 in place of Jacques Nienaber, who is now with Leinster. But that is not nearly the seismic change that has been evidenced in the coaching groups at the other three top southern hemisphere rugby nations - New Zealand, Australia and Argentina.

Those changes should add interest for Erasmus when he watches them play this weekend, with New Zealand hosting England, Australia hosting Wales and Argentina up against France at the start of two test series for all three of those teams.

For while Erasmus’ primary focus will be on the two games that will make a few points either way about the real pecking order in world rugby, by the middle of the month his attention and that of his fellow coaches will switch to the next mission, which will be the winning of the Castle Lager Rugby Championship.

Erasmus will be watching eagerly as New Zealand, the perennial winners of the southern hemisphere international competition, host an England team that are feeling resurgent after a Guinness Six Nations season where they started by losing to Scotland but then ended Ireland’s Grand Slam dream before pushing France close.

START OF NEW ERA FOR ALL BLACKS

And he should be more eager than usual to see how the All Blacks go, for this is the start of something new for the Kiwis. It is not just Ian Foster who has been moved on as coach, but the whole legacy of the group under Sir Graham Henry that broke a long World Cup drought for their country on home soil back in 2011.

It was a journey that effectively started in the previous World Cup cycle, with Henry being spared the axe after his team was knocked out by the hosts, albeit in a match played in Cardiff, in the 2007 World Cup in France. Steve Hansen was Henry’s senior assistant coach then, and he survived with Henry to experience the 2011 success before fronting the retention of the Webb Ellis trophy in England in 2015.

Foster was Hansen’s assistant through to the unexpected defeat at the hands of Eddie Jones’ England in the 2019 semifinal in Yokohama. He then took the reigns when Hansen left to coach in Japan, and somehow managed to survive a fairly tumultuous four year cycle in which the All Blacks lost more games than they usually do, including a series defeat at home to Ireland and a first ever defeat to Argentina.

That first loss to the Pumas was on neutral soil, but the South American team followed up by winning on Kiwi soil in the 2022 Rugby Championship.

FOCUS ON ROBERTSON’S STEP UP

Hansen has told the media that he felt Foster was mistreated by his bosses and didn’t get the support he and before him Henry enjoyed from the respective CEO’s, and like many of his countrymen, he seems intrigued by how Scott Robertson will go as Foster’s replacement.

Robertson was the Crusaders coach who experienced unprecedented success in Super Rugby, albeit that Super Rugby has become a much watered down version of what it was in recent years with the departure of South Africa. Under Robertson, Crusaders won seven straight title, and won 84 per cent of their games played in that time.

The break dancing coach came close to displacing Foster two years ago. The All Blacks’ backs to the wall win over the Boks in Johannesburg a week after a big defeat in Nelspruit probably saved Foster his job as back home the writing was perceived to be on the wall for the former Chiefs player.

“There’s a big step up from Super Rugby to international rugby,” said Hansen in reference to the challenge that Robertson is facing.

That Hansen is right might be illustrated by the career of another serial winning coach who was at the helm of a successful Crusaders era, Robbie Deans. Denied a chance to coach the All Blacks, Deans moved to Australia, where his success with the Wallabies was limited.

SCHMIDT WILL HOPE FOR MORE SUCCESS THAN COMPATRIOTS

Which cues another Kiwi, Joe Schmidt. The former Ireland coach was heading into the comfort of retirement when he was talked into following the paths treaded by fellow New Zealanders Deans and former Chiefs and Glasgow Warriors coach Dave Rennie by crossing the Tasman and taking up the reins at the Wallabies.

Like Robertson, Schmidt will be facing a baptism in his new role on Saturday, with in his case the objective being slightly easier. Wales arrived in Australia off a long sequence of defeats and although they were understrength, the recent loss to the Boks at Twickenham didn’t really inspire much hope of a turnaround soon.

There again, Wales did smash Australia in a Pool game at last year’s World Cup, effectively making a mockery of the controversial selections made by Jones, who it later transpired had been interviewed for the Japan job before the World Cup even started. The Wallabies went on to exit at the Pool stage for the first time in their history, so it could be argued that they can’t sink lower than they are now.

It hasn’t been an easy start for Schmidt, with two of Australia’s best young rugby union players, Carter Gordon and Mark Nawaqanitawase, recently announcing that they were switching to Rugby League. Interest in the code appears to be waning in Australia, where there is much competition from both the League and AFL (Australian rules), both of which are well ahead of union in terms of popularity in a country where cricket is the national sport and soccer is also more popular.


PRESSURE ON WALLABIES AHEAD OF LIONS

With the need to win back eyes before Australia host the next World Cup in 2027, Schmidt’s immediate brief is to get the Wallabies competitive for next year’s iconic series against the British and Irish Lions. A more competitive showing in this season’s Rugby Championship, with the Boks, All Blacks and the Pumas as the other competing teams, will not only please Schmidt’s Australian bosses, but also the Lions tour organisers.

It won’t be much of a series if the Wallabies the Lions face are at the level that Jones’s team was at in France.

The Boks head to Australia for two games at the start of the Championship in August, so Erasmus might be even more interested right now to see how the Wallabies go against Wales than he will be in Robertson’s international coaching debut. Although to counter-balance that, Erasmus does know Schmidt and his style well, having worked closely with the Kiwi when he was coaching Ireland and Erasmus was director of rugby at Munster.

Schmidt has one advantage on Robertson, which is that he boasts extensive international coaching experience after his time with Ireland and he was also involved with the All Blacks in the last year of Foster’s reign.

It won’t be easy for Schmidt though, for the Australian rugby media is demanding, and expectations are often higher than they should be. For instance, although they lost 40-6 to Wales in the World Cup, the Wallabies are overwhelming favourites to win the series 2-0.

They will need to sweep Wales though if they are to go into the August games against the Boks with any confidence, their good record in their own country against the South Africans notwithstanding.

CONTEMPONI FACES TOUGH BAPTISM

The other competing nation in the Rugby Championship, Argentina, has also had a change of coach, with Michael Cheika bowing out after the World Cup and now headed to the English Premiership team Leicester Tigers. Felipe Contemponi, the former Pumas flyhalf, will take charge in Cheika’s place, but at least in the case of the Pumas there is some continuity as Contemponi was the Australian’s assistant coach for the last 18 months of his reign.

What Contemponi does not have though is an easy start, with the Pumas hosting France, who will be eager to start climbing the ladder again after their double disappointment of World Cup and Six Nations failure, in a two match series. The Pumas will play the Boks home and away at the conclusion of the Championship in late September, the Boks’ home game being in Nelspruit.

All of this weekend’s fixtures will be followed up by second games a week later, with England playing their second game in Auckland, Wales travelling from Sydney to Melbourne, and Argentina hosting their second game against France in Buenos Aires.

Weekend International Fixtures involving Castle Lager Rugby Championship teams

New Zealand v England (Dunedin, Saturday 9:05am)

Australia v Wales (Sydney, Saturday 11:45am)

South Africa v Ireland (Pretoria, Saturday 5pm)

Argentina v France (Mendoza, Saturday 9pm)

Second tests on13 July

New Zealand v England (Auckland, 9:05am)

Australia v Wales (Melbourne, 11:45am)

South Africa v Ireland (Durban, 5pm)

Argentina v France (Buenos Aires, 9pm)