Shattered Glass Part 2

Heyneke Meyer once told us a story about a boy who desperately wanted to know what it would take to be truly successful. He went to a wise old man who lived on top of a mountain (they always seem to do), and told him of his pursuit of this knowledge, hoping the old man would be able to help him.

The old man agreed to help, and took the boy to a nearby lake where he requested him to walk into it, right up to the point where he couldn’t go deeper. The boy did as the old man had asked, and walked into the pond, with the old man following.

When he reached the point where he couldn’t go deeper, the old man came from behind and forced him underneath the water, holding him down forcefully. The boy struggled and kicked and panicked, but the old man wouldn’t let go of him.

Just when the boy thought that he would be drowning on this day, the old man let him go, and the boy surfaced, gasping for air, completely confused and too exhausted to think, glaring at the old man with his eyes, yearning for an answer.

The old man asked him: “When you were down there, what were you thinking of?” The boy replied that he wasn’t thinking of anything, that all he wanted was a breath of air.

The old man then proclaimed: “If you ever want something as much you wanted that breath of air, you’ll find a way to be successful.

That is how badly I wanted to win on Saturday.

Unfortunately, in this competition, if you play within 99% of where you need to be, you’re going to get thumped - nothing less than 100% is good enough. Now granted, if we were only 99% of the way there, we probably would have put up a more competitive performance.

Our review showed that the “ball in play” stat was the lowest in the tournament yet, at 27 minutes, which explains the talk among the players that it didn’t feel like we could get ourselves into the thick of things. We normally average around 40 minutes. Neither of the teams were interested in playing too much rugby, given the conditions. A tactical game ensued.

When that is the case, only two things can win a game for you - precision and discipline. With 16 penalties conceded, who were we trying to fool? There were some mixed emotions with regards to the referee’s interpretation, but in hindsight we were probably at fault most of the time.

The number of basic unforced errors was unacceptable, “ball lost in contact” being the biggest contribution to our inability to gain ascendancy.

I wonder if our tentativeness was caused by our over-eagerness to pull this one through. The mistakes we made were uncharacteristic, and I have to believe that they were the result of an unspoken-of pressure that loomed over us ahead of this match.

Then again, every game is going to bring forth this kind of pressure, and if we can’t adapt we won’t be doing ourselves any favours.

The best thing to do is to put this one behind us. A winning team has to know how to lose as well, but they won’t get used to it. Once again, it was shattered glass for me, with this loss marking the first time I have ever lost to a South African franchise.

It doesn’t matter to me anymore. The only words I’m interested in are resilience and redemption. We look forward to the Lions game with so much to play for. Point.

Zsa Zsa (my puppy) and I have a good thing going at home. She eats like a brown bear and insists on leaving landmines in every room of my house. My golf shoes are demolished, but I think she sensed that I’m no good in any case, so good riddance… Puma probably hates me by now.

I’ve played some songs for her on the guitar, and she seems to be fond of my rendition of “Hey Ya” by Outkast, probably because I replaced “Hey Ya” with “Zsa Zsa”… When I say she’s fond of it, I actually mean she’s barking, so I hope that’s “Zsasian” for “good stuff”.

I hope you guys enjoyed the public holiday. Of course we didn’t have one, but no one complained. Looking forward to seeing you at Fortress Loftus on Saturday, keep backing us.