Saturday’s Vodacom United Rugby Championship Grand Final may pit the top two teams in the Championship against each other in a winner-takes-all battle, but it is also the scene of a clash of two defensive coaches - the master and the apprentice.
In Irish juggernaut Leinster’s corner, their defence maestro needs no introduction. Jacques Nienaber, the architect of the defence system that won the Springboks back to back World Cups, has been at Leinster for two seasons now.
Nienaber has crafted his magic into Leinster’s DNA, and made them a greater force than they were over the past few seasons, adding new defensive strains to their already impressive game plan.
And while he is maligned and criticised by former Irish players who want to give him the blame for everything from Ireland’s loss of their Six Nations title to the price of milk in Dublin, those who have worked with Nienaber know his value.
Leo Cullen, the Leinster coach who is under pressure to deliver their first URC title, knows this as well. He has consistently defended Nienaber when the misaligned attacks have come, and knows that the defence is the key to the battle this weekend.
After all, attack scores tries, as they say, and defence wins titles.
Few South Africans will have to be convinced of Nienaber’s worth to a team. They have seen it first hand, both in the Bok actions on the field and in the off-field Chasing the Sun heroics in both World Cup victories.
ON THE OTHER SIDE
But now Nienaber is on the other side. Leinster’s attack is already one of the best in the competition and their ability, through a virtual international line-up to score early and get a head of steam was what killed off Franco Smith’s Glasgow Warriors’ chances of success.
While it went unnoticed, the defensive organisation stopped the Warriors normally free-flowing attack from scoring and keeping themselves in the game.
Saturday will only heighten that, with Nienaber knowing the team has the crowd at Croke Park - a venue deeply ingrained in the Irish psyche because of its Gaelic Football roots - will be behind his team.
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That 16th man factor is another hill for the Bulls to climb, and Nienaber will be looking to his charges to keep his reputation intact, even though he knows he will be coaching against the wishes of his countrymen.
Bulls coach Jake White played down the Nienaber factor when asked about it before his side’s departure for Ireland, saying that the former Bok coach’s knowledge of Bulls players won’t make that much of a difference, what would count is the attitude of the players on the field.
“I'll say this. There's so much analysis done now and so much intellectual property sharing that you don't need people in the circle to know what people do or don't do. As I said, there's hours and hours and hours of video analysts working on players, on defence systems and all that,” White said.
“Yes, of course, it would be wrong of me to say it won’t mean anything. He'll know all these players like the back of his hand. He had to look at them when he picked them in the national set-up. But that is something that will be positive.
“But, you know, we might change things. That's the nice thing about sport. We might have to change one or two things knowing that he knows what we're going to do. And that's also part of, you know, obviously the gambit that you need when you're a coach as well.
“Maybe we know what he knows, but like Dricus du Plessis said - they don’t know what we know.”
A DEFENCE COACH OBSESSED WITH HIS CRAFT
White’s own success this season has been on the back of the rookie defence coach of the URC. Virtual unknown in international circles, Jean Tiedt - the former Pukke defence coach that helped them to their first Varsity Cup title in 2016.
Tiedt is known as a defensive coach who is obsessed with the craft of defending the line. His coaching mates talk about his obsessive note-taking during a game, so much so that some of them have wondered if he writes a book of notes per game.
But his influence has been apparent. While he has yet to spend an entire season at the Bulls - he didn’t have the obligatory pre-season that most defensive coaches crave as he was helping the Bulls Currie Cup campaign, his influence has been telling over the past few months.
The Bulls defensive effort late in the first half against the Sharks has been talked about since the weekend, with head coach Jake White pinpointing it as the moment the Bulls won the semifinal and booked their trip to Dublin.
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But Tiedt’s influence is far greater than that. The former scrumhalf, who made his name at schoolboy rugby at Monument alongside now defence coach Jaque Fourie, the former Bok midfield great, he has worked his way up before being snapped up by the Bulls.
His playing career was at scrumhalf, both for the Lions but mostly for the Leopards, and his attention to detail made him a good fit at Pukke.
LEGENDARY TALES
There the stories of his obsessive detail are legendary, and his time at the Bulls has already seen the team craft a more formidable defence effort. Last season the team conceded 54 tries over the course of the season, this year it was 10 less - at 44, which across 18 games is less than three a game, not bad at all.
To put that into perspective, only Leinster (35) and Glasgow (40) have conceded less over the course of the season, and for a defence coach in his maiden URC, will be proud of that.
“Our defence has improved. It's the fourth year we've played, and all of you will know we've conceded 44 tries in 18 games,” White said ahead of the final.
“You know, that's far lower than we've ever had in this competition in the last four years. So credit to him (Tiedt). He's done an outstanding job. But we're now playing against one of the best attacking teams that we could play against. You saw what they did against Glasgow. And Glasgow are champions from last year.
“So our game is where we need it to be, both attack and defence. That's where you need to be at these last games of the season to be comfortable that everything is in place.”
Tiedt is looking forward to a proper pre-season with the squad and to really embed himself and his system in the Bulls DNA over the next few months, but this weekend he knows the team need to front up in imposing conditions if they are to stand a chance.
And yet despite the overarching narrative around the Grand Final, the sub-text of the defence coaches remains another plot that will contribute to the wonder of it all, and the stories that will be told for years to come.
Nienaber is no doubt the defensive master, and deservedly so. This weekend, Tiedt, the apprentice, gets the chance to make his mark.