Lies, damn lies and statistics

Italy, according to statistics of international rugby matches in 2009, have the best scrum in world rugby.

And before I get accused of being disingenuous by one of the subjects in this column let me quickly admit that my opening paragraph, as per all good writing manuals, is for deliberate effect – i.e. grab your reader’s attention.

So, having hopefully achieved that, let’s return to the theme of my last few columns – whether the current Springboks are as good as we/they think they are and whether their “magnificent” year has been tainted by what has been described as a calamitous end-of-year tour.

One of the subjects touched on was the Springboks’ unstable scrummaging and, as mentioned, I was interested to be sent an e-mail link to Bok forwards coach Gary Gold’s column on RugbyIQ (http://coaching.blog.rugbyiq.com/ ) in which he provided some interesting insights.

I admired Gold’s candidness because venturing into print (should that be digital?) is a risky business. Your views are misunderstood, misconstrued and misquoted (ask me I’ve done it for 40 years!) - to the extent that when the 1995 Rugby World Cup was approaching Kitch Christie summarily banned a number of the Boks, including Francois Pienaar, from writing columns.

At the Sunday Times we were a little put out to lose Pienaar’s words of wisdom but Christie, a master of homespun truisms, simply growled, “no matter how careful the guys try to be it will come out wrong!”

Sometimes, I have to admit, I agree with him.

But Gold has been bold enough to carry it through and duly produced a column setting out the factors that concern the Springbok coaches and the scrum, while not ignored, is not priority number one.

It is from Gold’s stats that I gleaned the pearl that Italy, who can’t win Tests against the big sides, have an extremely effective scrum and that the Boks are really not that bad.

Gold is dead honest and does not gloss over the problems in the scrum but in his life, and in all likelihood that of Peter de Villiers and Dick Muir, the most pressing problems are the breakdown (don’t we know that!), ball retention, effective kicking, fail-safe tackling and only then the scrum; a facet which, according the stats, amounts to a very small part of the game.

Of course, stats can be made to prove anything so check out RugbyIQ and see for yourself and make up your own mind.

Me? I’m not convinced. The problems in the Bok scrum presented our opponents with an unwanted psychological edge while my contention is that the key reason for the loss of momentum at the end of the year goes to poor selection and the inability to be realistic.

There were some shocking selection errors during the year, particularly on the tour north, some alarming substitutions and the team as a whole gloried in their victories without acknowledging the role of good fortune.

They say you make your luck but seeing a re-run of the second Test against the Lions on SuperSport again the other night showed just how fortuitous it was for the Boks to edge in while a number of the Tri-Nations Test hinged on moments of luck going our way.

And when the Boks were beaten they were well beaten but we tended to complacently crow about being No1 without questioning the make-up of our teams or the efficacy of our tactics.

For instance there was never a concession that while we were achieving results with our kicking game our tactical kicking, apart from Fourie du Preez, was not of a particularly high standard – which is why Ireland were able to cope so well in the last game of the season.

National selector Ian McIntosh is another who has put his thoughts up for public consumption – in print in his regular column in The Sharks magazine.

McIntosh contends that there was an underlying wisdom to the selection of the touring squad, stating: “Three years ago (2006) a watered down Springbok team got hammered by Ireland on their end of year tour. Commentators, as now, were very critical of their performance.

“I personally believe that selection was the masterstroke that won South Africa the Rugby World Cup the following year.

“Not only did it give needed rest to the top players left behind, but it also unearthed a number of players who the selectors afterwards knew could play at the top level, which was the whole reason for the exercise. It was an invaluable sortie.

“The so-called “B” team that was written off by the prophets of doom went out to beat England on their hallowed turf an Twickenham the very next week (it was actually three weeks later because in between they beat a World XV and lost to England). And a number of those players went on to form part of the successful World Cup squad that traveled to France in 2007.”

Fair enough. However in 2006 Fourie du Preez, Victor Matfield, Os du Randt, Percy Montgomery, Schalk Burger and Jaque Fourie (the latter two injured, the others rested) did not tour at all while the only new “top gun” to emerge was Francois Steyn (Ruan Pienaar was still on the fringes), so it could be argued the turnaround the following year may well have been down to the return of the front-liners rather than the emergence of a new generation – especially as Bismarck and Jannie du Plessis would not be included until the following year.

As mentioned previously the coming down of the curtain on 2009 may well have signaled the beginning of the end of a golden era. I believe we missed the mark with some of the selections, I believe our kick-it-first approach was found out and that 2010, the year before the next World Cup, might need to be one of significant changes.

Clearly some of the men charged with putting it all together disagree and… I sincerely hope they are right!