Jake’s progress

So Jake White thinks he would not change a thing about his first year as Springbok coach? Wow!

Must say I was a bit taken aback when I read the Springbok coach’s views in an article on the Zone after he and his team had returned from their trek through Britain and South America.

Wrestling with angles to wrap up the rugby year - the positives, the negatives, the prospects – I was staggered by White’s view that he would not have changed a thing in what was an annus mirabilis when ranged against the free-fall of Rugby World Cup 2003 and where we are now.

Fact is there were, and are, many things that could have been done differently. White, it seems, has contracted a little bit of that strange dementia that overcomes men of previously sound mind once they become the Springbok coach.

But before getting into some of the issues let me state that Jake White, in spite of everything, has done an incredible job. He has given Springbok rugby its pride back and for that he deserves all the acclaim that has come his way because he has done so almost single-handedly without the support, both from a technical and a mentoring perspective, that the like of Andy Robinson or Eddie Jones would have.

White has coped admirably with the uniquely South African constraints - restrictions that his coaching antagonists do not have to deal with - that limit his progress and ability to perform and he has done so with good humour, honesty and an unflinching belief in the merits of the local game and, especially, its players.

But to say that “if the tour was starting again, even knowing what I know now, I would do everything exactly the same again and I would not change a thing,” is disingenuous for mistakes were made that affected the team’s performance and which may continue to do so.

These range from trivial things like the astonishing admission that the team should have played with longer studs against England to White’s staggering faux pas to talk down the Irish ahead of the test at Lansdowne Road.

Another concern must be the young coach’s blind faith in certain players – not always a bad thing – but blind spots when it comes to others.

He put himself into a straitjacket with his early appointment of John Smit as captain that prevented him from selecting form players later in the year while his loyalty, whether by choice or instruction, to others meant that the efforts of especially the three B’s, Richard Bands, Gary Botha and Ettienne Botha, went unrewarded.

Certainly, given the continued Achilles heel of poor scrummaging – a facet of the game the impacted on the performance of the Boks in other areas of play – White’s ignoring of Bands makes little sense. The question has to be asked: If he could do with Os du Randt what he did when he brought the old war horse back from the brink of retirement what could he not do for a much younger man such as Bands? Is that not what “coaching” is all about?

White’s insistence that free-wheeling Super 12 rugby could be played in cold and wet weather and soggy fields was shown to be erroneous as early as the Welsh test and he certainly erred in not getting the team to Britain as early as possible to become acclimatized and also by not introducing into his coaching squad someone experienced in the techniques that work well in these conditions.

With a clarion warning when his Springbok players struggled so in Western Province’s rainy Currie Cup semi-final against Free State, White had spoken of getting in touch with Jake Boer, who has forged a name for himself in English rugby, or someone of his ilk to help the team come to terms with the special demands they would encounter in the UK and Ireland but it was never done.

There is no getting away from the fact that the Springboks played the wrong rugby – possibly because the Super 12 and Tri-Nations have denuded our game of the “grinders” but that is the subject of another column.

White’s firing up of Ireland was a cardinal error – which I’m sure is one mistake he’ll not be repeating! – while it was extremely shortsighted to introduce the controversy of trying to select Jaque Fourie ahead of Breyton Paulse for the England test.

This was a logical, purely rugby decision, but in the peculiar South Africa situation, right after Paulse had won his 50th cap, it was unwise and an indication of not only the unique problems faced by Springbok coaches but also to what extent White has to pick his way through a morass of political issues without the benefit of sage counsel.

The upshot was that the Springboks, in spite of an inspiring talk from Ernie Els the day before, put in a horrible performance against the English and one must ask to what extent the quota quarrel influenced their malaise.

The coach’s inexperience also showed in his handling of Schalk Burger. By hiding the young flanker from the Press (Burger was put off-limits for interviews) he turned him into a target and his remark, after Burger was yellow-carded against Wales, that “he could go from No6 to No23,” was grist to the media mill.

By the time White started defending Burger, following Paul Honiss’ afternoon of blunders in Dublin, it was too late to repair the damage and Burger was a marked man.

It is also worrying that sub-standard elements in the play of the Boks persisted right to the end. An inability to protect and control the ball at the breakdown was as marked against the callow Pumas as it was against Wales at the start of the tour while unacceptably high “for” and “against” penalty counts persisted – 8-17 against Wales; 15-15 against Ireland; 8-11 against England; 7-21 against Scotland and 12-18 against Argentina.

In all five tests the Springboks’ ball retention count was distinctly worse than that of their opposition; indicating a disturbing retreat from the highs standards achieved in the two home Tri-Nations tests.

Going forward it must be a concern that White’s loud beating of the fatigue and “we’re-just-not-strong-enough” drum could create an impression in the minds of the players that they can’t beat the like of England playing away from home.

As wonderful as the year has been there is still the question of being able to beat the big sides overseas so I beg to differ with White when he says, “I firmly believe that the things that went wrong for us on this tour were beyond our control.”

There was a lot that could have been changed or done differently.

So there are the negatives. Even though the playing of the Nedbank Golf Challenge has given me that downhill-to-Christmas feeling I will be writing about the highlights in my next column before, hopefully!, heading for a place where the oval ball is not the centre of the universe!