IF HE IS SHIELDING HIS PLAYERS RASSIE IS BEING A GOOD COACH
What was going to be a mundane Tuesday, one which was admittedly going to be ended by the excitement of going to the fourth All Black game against a club team at Ellis Park, suddenly got interesting. When my colleague Brenden Nel picked up his phone, he told me he was about to call me, for he too had had his interest piqued - Rassie was about to front again!
With the team already selected and announced the day before, and Rassie having explained his selections then, the Springbok coach wasn’t expected to be seen again by the media until match day.
Yes, we did see him twice the previous week, in the buildup to the first Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry test match. But with the team set to be announced on the Thursday of that week, we’d got the impression that his Monday appearance alongside his law adviser Jaco Peyper had been directed around issues relating to refereeing and the narrative coming out of the New Zealand camp about games being slowed down.
We assumed Rassie fronting again meant there was something big in the air, except that it didn’t turn out like that. Rassie used the press conference to double down on what he’d already said about mistakes he’d made that had contributed to the first test defeat.
Inevitably someone asked Rassie why he was at the top table two days in a row. His response was that he wanted his assistant coaches to be spared their media duties so they could concentrate all their energies on rectifying what went wrong at Ellis Park. He said he wanted the players to focus on what they needed to do in order to rectify what went wrong.
So when he denied he was shielding the players from the pressure he was probably being a wee bit contradictory, but if he was shielding them, if he was taking it upon himself to be the target of scrutiny that the players might otherwise be, he was actually just doing what good coaches should do.
Speaking on the Talking Boks podcast with Brenden and I, Nick Mallett admitted he regretted being a bit too honest when after what was then a record 28-0 defeat to the All Blacks in Dunedin in 1999, he responded to the questioning by effectively fingering the players, in particular the callow halfback pairing of Dave von Hoesslin and Gaffie du Toit.
There were injuries back then that ruled out more experienced players like Joost van der Westhuizen and Henry Honiball, but Nick did choose those players and he regrets now that he didn’t take a different approach when answering the questions.
If Jake White subjects himself to any form of introspection of self-reflection, he might also find himself regretting some of the things he said after games he presided over during his stint at Bulls coach. Players don’t want to hear or read over and over again that the team would be much better off if there were better players than them available to face the challenge.
Like Nick, he was stating the obvious, but it did nothing to inspire confidence in his players and their confidence and trust in him. From what I understand, it is why he is no longer in his job at the Pretoria club, even though he made a habit of taking them to URC finals and did improve them considerably from where they were before he took over.
DIVVY GOT RIGHT WHAT NICK AND JAKE GOT WRONG
On the other end of the spectrum was Peter de Villiers. I hope Schalk Burger doesn’t mind reminding readers of this, but the incident that happened in the early minutes of the second test against the British and Irish Lions in Pretoria in 2009, when you watch it on video again, did justify the fuss that the UK media made of it. If he’d been shown a red card then, I doubt Schalk would have complained.
But instead of letting the heat go onto Schalk, his coach, Divvy, went beyond the call of duty in trying to protect him. Instead of Schalk being the story, Div became the story, and rightly so after his colourful defence of his player at a momentous press conference the following Monday where he invoked images of South African rugby players dressed in tutus and going into the bush to eye gouge real live lions.
The coach came across as completely madcap, but in doing so he earned massive respect from his players. He definitely wasn’t the best technical or strategic coach to take charge of the Boks, but he did earn the respect of his players and they repaid him by emphatically winning the Tri-Nations, and whitewashing New Zealand 3-0 in the process, the following month.
PANIC BUTTON. WHAT PANIC BUTTON?
We can assume that what Rassie has said publicly this week will be very different to what he has been saying behind closed doors to his players. It’s noble and maybe expedient of him to take the blame for the players’ errors in the 33-16 defeat to the All Blacks, but it also isn’t completely correct.
The players were to blame for the Bok failure to convert the pressure they were exerting into something concrete on the scoreboard and Rassie would have given them the hairdryer treatment afterwards and in team meetings. We’ve all seen Chasing the Sun, so we all know how straight and honest Rassie can be. And while protecting the players publicly, it would have been no holds barred away from the media glare.
What did Rassie get wrong? If there was an error, it was in the selection, although as I explained in my wrap of the first test on Monday, the rotation of selection over the first part of the season that led to the team that fronted All Blacks last week being rusty was unavoidable.
The recognised first choice unit is ageing, as many critics of his latest selection have pointed out, and if the Boks are going to be assured of making a proper challenge for a three-peat of World Cup titles in Australia next year, he has no choice but to keep spreading his selection net.
One of the phrases that appeared in headlines after Monday’s team announcement, where Rassie effectively confirmed he was retaining the core of the same team, was “panic button”. As if by not doing what he might otherwise have done by making sweeping changes, it was a sign of the Bok coach panicking.
I am fully aware that had the result at Ellis Park turned out differently, he’d have made a different selection for Cape Town. He’s said as much. But in asking the team that played in Johannesburg to play again, by giving the players a chance to rectify the errors that contributed to defeat, Rassie is actually doing the opposite of panicking.
Instead he’s endorsing what most of us would agree on when we watch replays of the Johannesburg game - if it were not for the moments of poor co-ordination and cohesion breakdowns, that team should have buried the All Blacks by 20 points. That was what their forward and all round physical superiority demanded.
Like in Dunedin in that aforementioned game, where Rassie was one of Mallett’s players, the halfbacks were not good. So they’ve been replaced, although it is good to see Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu on the bench. His utility value gives the Boks much greater bench depth, as does the selection of Thomas du Toit and Lood de Jager. That is a mistake Rassie made that is now rectified.
Rassie is not panicking. His selection is the opposite of panic. He’s recognising what the team did for most of the game at Ellis Park, and asking them to do it again - but just be a bit more accurate this time.
Throwing caution to the wind by making sweeping changes, switching a No 8 to scrumhalf, like the Bok selectors did with Gerrie Sonnekus in the 1974 Lions series, that would be panic. Sticking to your guns is not panic.
STAYING FOR ANOTHER ELLIS PARK GAME WAS THE RIGHT DECISION
So I was supposed to be back in Cape Town on Tuesday night, and not at Ellis Park. There had been an assumption that the Boks would move to Cape Town from the start of the week to prepare for Saturday’s test at the DHL Stadium, and it made sense to stick with the Boks as that is where the main story is.
It was only late last week we learned the Boks were staying in Johannesburg until Wednesday, which gave me the opportunity to do something I also wanted to do - say at the end of this tour that I had been at every game live. Well, not Baltimore. I am paying for myself on this trip, and flying to the United States is beyond my budget.
And how glad I am that I stayed. It was the first time in ages that I went to Ellis Park for anything other than a Bok game, and expected the smaller crowd would mean that the game would lack atmosphere and the stadium would feel cavernous. The official crowd figure was just under 16 000, but it felt like there were many more people than that. Maybe the official figures didn’t count the schools that I assume got in for free?
Anyway, regardless of the official figure, it felt like there were more like 36 000 in the ground, and it was a wonderful occasion on what felt more like a balmy spring evening than a late winter evening and the Lions put in an effort that frankly was worthy of a full house.
LIONS ANSWERED THE QUESTION
There are unfortunately no pills for stupidity so I can’t help the ignorant people, particularly from overseas, who used the results of some of the earlier All Black tour games against club teams as an indicator that maybe South African rugby doesn’t have the depth we thought it has. The local teams are playing out of season, for goodness sake, and a game against an international team is hardly an ideal first pre-season warmup game.
To those who think that the All Black tour has somehow shown up the URC as a weaker competition than Super Rugby the Ellis Park game was a forceful blow in favour of a contrary view - the Lions were always going to be the toughest All Black tour opponents outside of the tests because they were playing the game deeper into their pre-season than the other teams did.
Then there is also the not insignificant point that the Lions were the one team that were anywhere near full strength. Morne van den Bergh was the only Springbok missing, whereas the Stormers had two thirds of their team missing when they started the tour against the All Blacks three weeks into their pre-season, and ditto the Bulls.
The Lions are still in pre-season, and their coach Cash van Rooyen spoke afterwards about how this early season contact means they will have to take a week or so of rest before reconvening to continue their preparations for a URC season that is still five weeks away. Yes, five weeks!
Now imagine if the Boks went to New Zealand and played teams that were five weeks away from starting their proper season, that were effectively playing their first game in nearly three months. And those teams the Boks played against were all without their All Blacks. What would the score be? I’d suggest that games between the Boks and New Zealand franchises would be far more one-sided.
As for this tour showing up the weakness of the URC, the Lions team that pushed the All Blacks so close in Joburg, and were out of season when doing it, only finished seventh in that competition. And up until this past season had never managed to make the top half.
To me what my trip to Ellis Park on Tuesday confirmed was that were the All Blacks to have toured here during the South African season, when the players are fit, and just some of the Boks had been made available to those club teams, they would almost certainly have lost two of their four games - to the Stormers and Lions. And possibly to the Bulls too.
DID THEY SAVE THE TOUR CONCEPT?
So the game against the one team that was deeper into the pre-season and anywhere near full strength turned out to be a thriller. Does that mean we need to rethink the tour concept, and the line that was coming out last week that maybe the games against the URC franchises are a bad idea?
The Lions certainly got with the program preached by Stormers coach John Dobson at the start - “We need to be competitive if the concept of club teams playing the All Blacks on future RGR tours is to be retained.”
The next RGR tour to South Africa is in eight years from now. By then hopefully rugby will have a global season, meaning that the local clubs/franchises will not be playing the All Blacks outside of their season. The Lions and the Stormers were competitive against the All Blacks even though they weren’t playing in season, so it would be reasonable to assume than in eight years hence, without the millstone around the SA necks that is the commitment to the northern season at club level but the southern season at international level, the local sides will all be very difficult opponents for the tourists.
So let’s hold off a decision on who faces the All Blacks on their next tour of South Africa until nearer the time.
THE EXHAUSTION IS WORTH IT
So Wednesday was the first day I spent back home in Cape Town in nearly three weeks. But apart from doing the Talking Boks podcast and one story on the previous night’s game for Supersport.com, I spent much of it either asleep or somewhere in between sleep and slumber. We worked until quite late at Ellis Park, I was in bed well after midnight, and then flew out of OR Tambo at 6.30am on Wednesday morning. Meaning I had to wake up at 4am.
Why did I book a flight so early? Well, I’ve already said there are no pills for stupidity. My flight back to Joburg on Monday, this time to Lanseria, is at a similar time. My reason for that is that these tours happen so rarely that I want to experience every part of it, and if Rassie names his team at 11.45am on Monday, like he did last week, I want to be there.
It is like old times, when newspapers sent their rugby writers everywhere and it is like reliving my youth. Only I am being reminded now that when I covered the Rugby World Cup in SA in 1995, and sometimes flew almost every day in a week in addition to all the work that needed to be done, I was not yet 30.
So working through the night back then on the Boks’ magnificent win in the opening game of that World Cup at Newlands, and then getting on a plane at 6am to fly to Port Elizabeth to cover Canada versus Romania at the old Boet Erasmus Stadium was doable.
We didn’t even go straight to PE. There was mist in what was then PE and we were diverted to East London and only arrived just before kick-off. Then I flew out that night for another game. I obviously wasn’t scared of flying back then. I had my air legs.
And I am getting them back. It’s great being on the go, and as I write this it is early morning Thursday and it is still dark outside. Another day starts. In two weeks time this will be all over, and there will be a horrible sense of anticlimax. So let’s enjoy it while it’s here. There’s the big tour opening Gala Dinner in the city centre to look forward to tonight and a massive game on Saturday. As Jurgen Klopp would say, we go again…