Boks face so many questions as No 1 status goes on the line

The week of the buildup to the first clash between the traditional powerhouses of world rugby in two years has finally arrived with the Springboks suddenly having more to think about than was the case even seven days ago following their first upset defeat to the Wallabies.

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Fortunately, the Boks’ world No 1 ranking wasn’t on the line in their Castle Lager Rugby Championship clash with Australia at Suncorp Stadium, but it will be against the current No 2 ranked team, the All Blacks, in Townsville on Saturday.

After the narrow loss on the Gold Coast, the defeat was explainable by the small things that went wrong, like the discipline and other execution errors, such as the place-kicking, that could be fixed. The Boks did score three tries to one in that first game after all, and that appeared to suggest they were still the better team. But post-Brisbane and a chastening four-try-to-one spanking, it’s all become a lot more complicated.

SOUTH AFRICANS CAN DRAW FROM HISTORICAL PRECEDENT

Thanks to their unbeaten run through the first four games and the two losses each suffered by the Boks and Wallabies, the All Blacks have already all but sealed the Castle Lager Rugby Championship title for another year. If part of the South African mission under the guidance of Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber was to ensure the consistency that would bring success in the years between World Cups, the first stage of that mission has already failed.

But this Bok group will know from their experience in 2018, when they beat the All Blacks in Wellington, that success against New Zealand usually defines a season for the South African national team. So it can be turned around, and there is historical precedent, and we’re not just referring to the fact that the last time the Boks beat the All Blacks in New Zealand it was after losing to Australia en route.

In 2009, South Africa’s most dominant year outside of 1998 in the southern hemisphere international competition then known as the Tri-Nations, John Smit’s Boks also came undone in Brisbane. It was a game that in many ways wasn’t completely dissimilar to what happened at Suncorp Stadium two days ago in the sense that the defeat was mainly down to a failure in execution.

The South Africans had swept all before them in the Tri-Nations to that point, and the unexpected defeat, and magnitude of it (21-6), threw a curve ball at their title aspirations with one game against the All Blacks in Hamilton to come. But the Boks corrected their errors, went back to the basics of their game and executed accurately, with a title clinching 32-29 win in a game that was more one-sided than that scoreline might suggest.

PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL STATE IS THE BIG QUESTION

Can the current vintage of Boks do what their predecessors did? Well, at least they don’t have to cross the Tasman Sea this time, the landmark 100th test on Saturday is being played on neutral territory. The question can only really be answered though if we know the Bok mindset and the physical and emotional state of the players.

In this time of Covid, that’s difficult to ascertain, and we can only really go on what we see on the field. And what was most disturbing from a South African viewpoint about what happened in Brisbane was how poor the Boks were in the key areas where they normally have the ascendancy. The most jarring of all was the sight of the Wallabies dominating the hits and other aspects of the physical game.

With no other obvious explanation, that does speak of mental fatigue or staleness, and that might be one big area where this Bok team differs from the 2009 vintage. Smit’s men also won a Lions series before playing that Tri-Nations, but they didn’t do it in the uniquely challenging circumstances that Siya Kolisi’s men did.

The Covid directed isolation and the quarantining that the Boks had to do when they got to Australia, which was off the back of two weeks in Gqeberha in isolation that followed on directly from the hard lockdown of the Lions series, has made this a very difficult and challenging year for the Boks.

The number of days spent at home living normally since the squad gathered in camp in Bloemfontein at the start of June can probably be counted on one hand. There’s nothing wrong with the Bok attitude, their defeat at Suncorp wasn’t for lack of trying, it may just be that digging deep to beat the Lions in the challenging circumstances they faced has taken a mental, emotional and physical toll that is now being translated into on-field performance.

WARNING SIGNS THAT NEED TO BE HEEDED

It would be remiss though in any analysis of where the Boks have gone wrong in the two matches in Australia to blame everything on mental fatigue. For there were warning signs beyond that in Brisbane that perhaps need to be heeded when we take a long view of the road ahead for the Boks.

For a start, there were times in the Suncorp defeat that the Boks looked more like the team that played the year before the 2009 season that has just been focused on. In 2008, the first year under Peter de Villiers’ coaching, the Boks looked like they were between games, and they were punished for it.

The coaches and player leadership group should probably be lauded for trying to introduce variations to their game in Brisbane, for they’ve been criticised enough for being too one-dimensional and one-trick ponies. But what was clear against the Wallabies was that while there was intent to attack space with ball in hand, they looked awkward doing it.

It is one thing to have attacking intent, it is another thing to know how to go about it, and to put it bluntly, after all the lateral running we saw at Suncorp, it didn’t look like the Boks had a coherent, thought out attacking plan beyond just spinning the ball wide.

Not since former Golden Lions coach Swys de Bruin left the coaching group towards the end of 2018 have the Boks had an identifiable specialist attack/backline coach focusing on that aspect of the game. The backline was also arguably also a much more potent attacking force back then too.

So perhaps that is something that Erasmus, in his position of director of rugby, should look at going forward. Attack needs to be coached as much as defence does, and while it is understood Felix Jones is helping with that aspect of the Bok game, it was not because he was a heavyweight attack/backline coach that the Irishman was first brought into the Bok management team.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Mention of the management team of course brings up the elephant in the room, something that no-one was talking about when the Boks were winning but has now become a hot topic, certainly on social media - the absence of Erasmus from the change-room and his water-boy duties.

Those who know how closely Erasmus and Nienaber have always worked together and how much they understand each other, with the phrase “joined at the hip” often being used to describe their working relationship, have up to now laughed off suggestions that Nienaber going it alone could be a problem.

It is a fact though that this tour is the first time aside from a week in Gqeberha that Nienaber has been a head coach without Erasmus at his side. Even when Erasmus was present as head coach in 2018 and 2019, Nienaber’s voice was heard, often even more so than that of the World Cup-winning coach, at training sessions and in team meetings.

What might be missing though is the calming presence brought by the Erasmus genius when it comes to strategy. Yes, he attends coaching meetings online from his home in South Africa, but that is not the same as him being present so the players see him and draw confidence from it.

MIGHT BE MISSING THE CHURCHILLIAN SPEECHES

What might also be missed are the expletive-laden Churchillian type speeches that we saw Erasmus inspiring the troops with on the M-Net documentary, Chasing the Sun.

Note the word ‘might’ being the operative word here, for from this far away it really is impossible to say. What we do know though is that this Bok team is way off its potential and is showing uncharacteristic tendencies so all possibilities need to be considered. Whether it can be sorted before the All Black game is another story, but fortunately history tells us that it is often folly to base a prediction on what will happen in a game between those teams on what goes before.

WEEKEND CASTLE LAGER RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS:

Australia 30 South Africa 17
Argentina 13 New Zealand 36