A good sort of déjà vu

Maybe it’s working in rugby for a long time that contributes to that feeling you are seeing something you have seen before, but it certainly came to me in a big way after Saturday’s emphatic Springbok trouncing of the Wallabies at Loftus.

It was one game later, in the very last match the Boks played in that season’s Tri-Nations, that Peter de Villiers saved his bacon in his first season in 2008. The venue was Coca-Cola Park, but the opponents were also Australia, and I remember having the sense of déjà vu that day because of what another Bok team had done to Australia at Loftus in Carel du Plessis’s first – and what proved only – season in 1997.

Like De Villiers, Heyneke Meyer will carry on from here of course, and not suffer the same fate as Du Plessis, who was axed after a 61-22 win, and he would have done so regardless of this most recent result. But in all three games one of the similarities was the way the Boks achieved it while appearing to the onlooker to be playing a different way to how they had been previously.

Some of the Boks who were part of Du Plessis’s side 15 years ago now readily admit what seemed pretty obvious at the time – which is that they resolved that day to play it their way rather than the way Du Plessis wanted them to play. It was being much more direct than they had been in a while that the Boks paved the way for victory.

And it was a similar story in 2008, though history records that non-playing captain John Smit and the rest of the senior players and assistant coaches on that occasion made the decision to become more direct in consultation with De Villiers rather than go behind his back. There was a team meeting before the previous game in Durban where a lot of the misconceptions and misunderstandings were cleared up, and Fourie du Preez and Butch James spearheaded a 53-8 victory.

From an early stage of that game in 2008 it was obvious from the press box that aspects of the Bok game had been changed. Everything was so much more direct and there was none of the aimless running to wide points that we had seen in some of the earlier games.

But when afterwards De Villiers was asked whether there had been a change to a more direct style, he raised eyebrows among scribes by denying that had been the case. The message peddled was that it was just a case of the Boks making the right decisions and thus creating opportunities.

Technically that wasn’t an untruth, just as technically it wasn’t an untruth when first skipper Jean de Villiers and then coach Meyer made similar statements after Loftus a few days ago. Judging from what was written, a few of my colleagues appeared to be amazed that neither Meyer nor De Villiers acknowledged that there had been much less kicking.

De Villiers just said that there were more attacking opportunities, Meyer said that the forwards had been dominant, which of course they were in Dunedin too but a lot of ball was just kicked away in that game.

Judging from the rugby conversations I have had with an assortment of people since Loftus, it seems most South Africans have made up their own minds. You didn’t have to be at Loftus to notice the difference Johan Goosen made by attacking the line and bringing the players around him into the game. Those piercing breaks he made sent out a clear message to the Aussie defenders that he needed to be watched, and by engaging defenders the flyhalf creates opportunity for the players outside him.

The selection of Francois Louw has also made a quantum difference to the Bok game, and while I feel sorry for the outstanding Marcell Coetzee, Meyer’s belated recognition of the role of the fetcher has brought a balance that wasn’t there before.

I didn’t ever believe that Meyer just wanted every ball to be kicked, and he always pursued an intelligent kicking game rather than a mindless one, so both he and his captain may be correct when they say that the game-plan hasn’t changed.

What is important though is that a successful game-plan requires that you have players who can execute it correctly, and that is undeniably what has changed with the Boks over the last few weeks. Louw’s ability to contest the breakdown and Goosen’s decision-making and ability to mix it up and bring balance to the strategy add the dimensions that were previously lacking.

By selecting the right back row and the right halfbacks – let’s not forget that Goosen wasn’t available to Meyer until recently – Meyer has moved closer to satisfying a demanding public, and if my sense of déjà vu is correct, there is historical precedent to suggest that what the coaches and captain say about the game-plan really doesn’t matter.

All that matters is that Meyer continues down the path that we saw the Boks take at Loftus, just as Peter de Villiers did in 2008. The changes we saw to the Bok game in the Coca-Cola Park win over the Aussies that year were carried over into the successful end of year tour that followed and then into a triumphant 2009 where they won the Tri-Nations and beat the British and Irish Lions.

And while Du Plessis did not reap the benefits of the turnaround at Loftus in 1997, the big win there did ensure that the man who took over from him, Nick Mallett, had something to build on. The Boks didn’t lose another match after that for 15 months.

While we shouldn’t pretend that the Australian team that the Boks beat was a strong one, and the margin of victory at a stadium the Aussies hate was more or less what should have been expected, there were signs at Loftus that under Meyer the Boks could be poised to start a similar successful run.