The Prozac Zone

Memo One to Rudolf Straeuli: Coach, whatever you do in the next few weeks, don’t say anything about the price of test tickets!

Memo Two to Rudolf Straeuli: Get out your dog-eared copy of Kitch Christie’s rugby lore and go over his advice about what to say, and especially not to say, about opposition teams ahead of important test matches.

Having taken over the Springboks just a few months ago, coached them to four home victories over lesser opposition, before suffering the recent defeats against New Zealand and Australia, Straeuli is only now entering that traumatic zone that has resulted in his job being described as possibly the most stressful in South Africa.

Straeuli who, it must be said, will not be taken by surprise, will find public opinion becoming more vindicative, Press comment less supportive and former Springboks far more critical and outspoken.

In 2000 Nick Mallett returned from down under having lost to both the All Blacks (12-25 in Christchurch) and the Wallabies (6-26 in Sydney) and we all knew black clouds were gathering over his career.

Back in Johannesburg the Boks, with Robbie Fleck at inside centre playing his most memorable test, beat the All Blacks 46-40 in an amazing game at Ellis Park and then moved to Durban to face the Wallabies in a match the visitors had to win to clinch the Tri-Nations.

That was the week Mallett was quoted as making probably the only statement he ever did with which all rugby fans agreed and in the test the Boks went down 18-19 to a last-second Stirling Mortlock penalty – awarded, fatefully it would seem when compared with events in the recent test matches, against Corné Krige for a ruck-and-maul offence.

Now I’m not suggesting Straeuli is about to follow the same route as Mallett. I’m sure his job is pretty secure and I’m raising the point merely as a device to get into this column and to illustrate the similarities with then and now.

Mallett and Harry Viljoen also spoke of having to re-build and also pleaded for patience but found this latter commodity to be in extremely short supply.

Straeuli has arrived at this juncture with the benefit of far more understanding from rugby’s constituency, but he will know only too well that two successive test defeats would pretty much have exhausted this willingness to be reasonable.

The demand will now be for victories and Straeuli, ever the realist, must be concerned that he has negotiated his first six test matches without finding solutions to many of the queries that hang over Springbok rugby.

Youngsters such as Bolla Conradie, André Pretorius, Marius Joubert, Brent Russell, Werner Greeff, Joe van Niekerk and Faan Rautenbach have done outstandingly and created hope for a bright future, but against the All Blacks and the Wallabies their flaws were all too evident.

All have exceptional talent, but all are still a long way short of contributing the complete package.

The like of Conradie, Pretorius and Greeff, for instance, need to do a lot of work on their kicking game. Pretorius is an elusive runner and gifted handler of the ball, but he tends to be predictable with the way he feints and then moves out and, possibly because of his lack of bulk, has shown no inclination to play his forwards into the game while those passing and kicking errors which go unnoticed a level down are glaringly exposed against the top sides.

Conradie's service sometimes lets him down and he is vulnerable on defence. He too needs to work on his kicking as well as on the options he might take to take pressure of his flyhalf.

The Bok pack, too, is a worry. Six tests and the coach is not yet sure of his best loose forward combination while he sits with the dilemma that his hardest working lock is not his best lineout jumper, while his best supplier of lineout ball falls short as a tight forward.

The frontrow, too, is hardly intimidating; gaining parity where the benchmark should be dominance.

In addition the rate of penalties conceded – in spite of some glaringly poor refereeing – is far too high while the effort to gain proper fitness and to be competitive has left the Boks alarmingly short of variation.

On top of this the contribution of Straeuli's experienced men has not been of the reliable steady-as-a-rock variety; adding to his problem of what to do about selection.

Even the fact that the Boks have started to score tries again, while praiseworthy, is less of a virtue when subjected to critical analysis. On their recent trip the Boks scored six tries (two against NZ and four against Australia) but all of them came from quickly exploiting ball turned over or mistakes by the opposition rather than being constructed from primary phase possession.

The fact is that the Boks are still some way short of regaining their membership of the Club of Five, with NZ, Australia, France and England, and Straeuli’s dilemma will be intensified rather than alleviated when (if?) players such as André Venter, Rassie Erasmus, Mark Andrews, Butch James and Robbie Fleck come back to form because he will have no way of knowing whether they will make an improvement or set him off on another round of experimentation.

There is a saying in South African rugby that “the only good Springbok team is one that wins” and the pressure on Straeuli and his charges is going to be excruciating in the return leg of the Tri-Nations – starting with the All Blacks in Durban on August 10 and the Wallabies at Ellis Park on August 17.

Straeuli is well-versed in the lore of local rugby and that is the reason for my second memo to him to re-affirm the methods of his mentor Kitch Christie.

I was amazed and alarmed at some of the pre-test dispatches reaching us from Brisbane – not only from Straeuli but also from the like of Krige, Van Niekerk and Matfield. The Aussies were soft, they lacked aggression, they didn’t like it when things got tough. We were going to be brutal and hunt them down, were some of the things that were said.

Then, incomprehensibly, we also got involved in the Ben Tune issue. I suspect Straeuli was trying to throw some pressure back on the opposition, but all he and his players succeeded in doing was firing the Wallabies up to awesome pitch.

The upshot was that we were 24-3 down after 30 minutes (with a supercharged Tune getting the first try) against a team primed for a fight – a scrap which duly, and unsurprisingly, broke out in the 28th minute and I’m not too sure that those blasted Aussies didn’t get the better of the brawl as well!

Suffice it to say that Christie would never have allowed an utterance or a gesture that might have been turned against him, and boastfulness and bravado is something that should quickly be expunged from the repertoire of the current team.

There is a view that all the Boks need is one victory over the like of New Zealand and Australia to galvanise their confidence and to set them back on the expressway, but I’m not so sure.

Take the current Wallaby or All Black sides and do a little experiment. How many Springboks could you place in these teams to make them stronger? One? Two? Perhaps three at most. How many Boks would presently make a World XV?

Therein lies the problem. South Africa has many excellent rugby players but no genuine world stars who are unquestionably the best in their position. There are, however, a number who can get there if, like Ernie Els over four rounds, they can bring to bear sustained performance, supreme concentration and flawless execution for as long as it is necessary.

And the time to start doing that will be at King’s Park in Durban on Saturday week.