A test of coaching resolve

With the wake-up call of the first week of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship now behind them, it would have been a busy and frenetic week for the coaches of the South African franchises as they searched for solutions to the myriad problems that were presented.

Take the Vodacom Bulls’ director of rugby Jake White out of the equation and you are left with quite an illuminating and yet depressing picture of what the chief obstacle of the local franchises might be in the new competition. White stands alone among the head coaches when it comes to having extensive experience of coaching overseas and being part of competitions such as the URC.

Some of the back-up men have experience. John McFarland, the Cell C Sharks’ defence coach, is one of those. But then it was McFarland who came up with the quote this week that might best sum up the essence of the South African challenge when he compared how settled Munster, who outplayed the Sharks in their first game last week, were to the Sharks.

He referenced Munster coach Johan van Graan, who has been at Munster since 2017, when he pointed out that “I have only been here for eight weeks”. Which is true. Most of the current Sharks back-up coaching team has only been in their positions for eight weeks. It takes time for coaches and players to get used to each other and to understand each other, to understand and get used to the systems. Much longer than eight weeks.

For the Emirates Lions, the one South African team that did win last week, it is even worse when you look at their coaching team. Jaque Fourie has coached elsewhere but he has only just arrived at the Lions, and ditto Albert van den Berg. Again, the same point applies - it takes time for a machine to start functioning properly.

MOST COACHES LACK INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE

The Lions head coach Cash van Rooyen has the same disadvantage that the DHL Stormers and Sharks head coaches have. Both John Dobson of the Stormers and Sean Everitt at the Sharks made their international coaching debuts in last year’s Super Rugby. It was cancelled after six games. That’s the extent of their exposure to being head coaches in that environment so far.

Compare that with most of the coaches of the Scottish, Irish, Welsh and even Italian coaches in the URC. Those who haven’t been head coaches of their current teams for an extended period of time have at least mostly had experience of coaching in what was the Pro14 before as coaches of other teams.

The Bulls appeared to correct quite quickly last week. They were 17-0 down early on against Leinster but for the rest of the game, the last hour, they mostly gave as good as they got and were unlucky not to put more points on the board. The smart money should be on the Leinster game being a microcosm of their season in the sense that, with White leading the group, they should learn quite quickly because he has so many years of experience behind him.

With the rest, it is going to be a challenging time, with the coaches in as much of a learning phase as their players when it comes to playing in Europe and when it comes to playing in a competition like the URC. And for all of them, even the Lions, there was clearly a lot that needed to be done after last week. Just a few days into the URC, it is already coming across as a cliche to suggest that the South African learning curve will have to be a steep one.

EVEN THE LIONS HAD A WAKE-UP CALL

The Lions were excellent in their first-half performance against Zebre in Parma last Friday, but even they received a disturbing wake-up call with that second-half performance, where they conceded 26 points. Clearly, the message they need to absorb from that is that against URC teams, you don’t ever assume a match is won.

Listening to the Stormers players and coaches speak this week, it appears they might have fallen into the same trap in Treviso, though to a lesser degree. They scored their opening try in the competition from the kick-off, and might have thought it was going to be easy. But Benetton weren’t passive like Zebre were in the first half of the game the night before and came back at them.

Still, as their centre Ruhan Nel suggested, with an 11-point lead halfway through the second half, they had reason to believe they had the winning of the game. That they weren’t able to close out should be a concern. And Munster at Thomond Park on Saturday night, as we saw last week when they played the Sharks, are going to provide far more formidable opposition.

The Bulls and Lions open the South African account in the second round of the competition when they play Connacht and the Scarlets respectively on Friday night. White has experience coaching a South African team against Connacht as his Springbok team played in Galway in the build-up to the 2007 World Cup. He had a second-string Bok team play for him that night, and they were given a run for their money.

CONNACHT CAN BE GIANT KILLERS

Connacht, although the less fashionable Irish province behind Leinster, Munster and Ulster, have also become known as a team that can cause upsets, like they did last year when they shocked Leinster in the Pro14, thus ending a long sequence of wins for that team in the competition, and Munster in the Rainbow Cup.

It is a game though that the Bulls should be targeting for a win if they want to challenge for URC silverware. If the weather forecasts are proved correct, they will have the curve ball of an early autumn cold front to contend with, and so will the Stormers the next night in Dublin. But in this competition, you have to learn to adapt quickly if you want to survive and thrive, so their respective coaching teams need to have them ready for the challenge.

The Sharks of course face a different kind of challenge when they face the fast-paced Glasgow Warriors, who still have elements of the Dave Rennie game, on the artificial 4G pitch at The Scotstoun in Glasgow. The Lions will be the first South African team to get a taste of what the Welsh will throw at them in this competition, and that will require some adjustment from what they did in Parma too.

Weekend Vodacom United Rugby Championship fixtures

Scarlets v Emirates Lions (Llanelli, Friday 20.35)

Connacht v Vodacom Bulls (Galway, Friday 20.35)

Benetton v Edinburgh (Treviso, Saturday 14.00)

Glasgow Warriors v Cell C Sharks (Glasgow, Saturday 16.00)

Zebre v Ulster (Parma, Saturday 18.15)

Munster v DHL Stormers (Limerick, Saturday 20.35)

Ospreys v Cardiff Blues (Swansea, Saturday 20.35)

Dragons v Leinster (Newport, Sunday 15.00)