A lesson from Tiger

Here’s a tip for Jake White and his Springboks, who have been lampooned as the Goon Show as they stumble through their tour of those three poxy islands in the South Pacific.

Okay, one of the islands is actually a continent, but you know what I mean. The Antipodes, Oz, the Land of the Long White Cloud, those places where we have made such a habit of losing… badly.

Forget about all those closed practices. Say nothing in press conferences – certainly nothing that could be construed to being helpful to the Aussies.

Next, ask one of the helpful blokes at Fox Television to provide a video tape of Tiger Woods winning the British Open at Hoylake and then sit down in the team room and watch it.

Now, Jake, allow for a few moments of contemplation, before banishing all your assistants, medical men and myriads of sundry hangers-on from the room.

Now announce that you are tearing up the plan; that you are throwing away all pre-conceived strategies about how to play the Aussies – especially the hugely overrated concept of “rush defence.”

It was never very special or innovative in any case. When I was in school we were taught rush defence (although our coach called it “binneskouer verdediging”) by our under 16 coach Gerhard Zaayman at Diamantveld Hoër in Kimberley.

Zaayman was a useful utility back for Griquas and as a former Stellenbosch first-team player he in all probability got his ideas from Doc Craven.

The tactic was simply that in rushing up on defence you concentrated on your opponent’s inside shoulder (the one nearest to you) and forced him to go out. As the flyhalf my job was thus to push my opponent wide and the rule was that if he beat me on the inside he would be taken by the covering flank; the No 8 running behind the line in case of a breach at centre.

Of course, occasionally I was instructed to run wide on purpose – to allow a dangerous jinker to come inside there to be wiped out by a forward veritably slobbering for the task!

We were taught to go up fast, to compress the space and give opponents as little time as possible to get up pace or to scan the field; pretty much rush defence.

So, scrap all thoughts of rush defence. It has been worked out by the like of Hadden, Laporte, Henry and Connolly and has led to a slew of rugby writers and columnists constantly slagging us for being offsides and planting seeds in the heads of referees.

This happens. Almost like when you ended Bill Young’s dubious career as a scrummager by knocking his technique, Jake.

Okay. Now we’ve kept quiet at media conferences. We’ve got rid of the myth of rush defence. We’ve cleared the room of all who shouldn’t be in Springbok kit. Now look at the tape of Tiger again.

Good. Now read out this quote from the Tiger. Better still, tear off the sheets with all those arrows-and-crosses doodles on the flip-chart and write it up there for all to see every time they pass by.

“I believe the way I play golf, you turn on the switch at the first hole and you have it on the entire time. You don’t try harder on each and every shot. You have the same effort level, give it everything on every shot.”

Has the light gone on yet? The way to be successful at rugby, or any other sport for that matter, is for every member of the team to be better than his opponent; to strive to be great while not making a mistake; to win every confrontation. Treat possession of the ball as something precious. Do that for 80 minutes and there’s little doubt you will come close. Certainly you’ll do a whole lot better than 0-49.

Now, Jake, apologise to the guys for the brainstorm that caused you to become mired in your own interests when you should have been concentrating on the Tri-Nations. Now ask the players how they would beat the Wallabies. Good? I have little doubt they know what to do. Now, John, you and the guys go out and do it. Your way.