Altitude tests won't offer solutions

Those who think the last two weeks in New Zealand and Australia represent a sudden shift in fortunes for the Springboks need to take a better look at the national team’s recent record.

Those who defend the Bok performances argue that it is just a blip in an otherwise winning era, but to buy into that would be to bury your head in the sand. The reality is that the glory days ended 12 months ago when Frans Steyn kicked the side to victory in Hamilton, and if you take the past year in isolation, it has been a poor one for the Boks.

It might seem disingenuous to claim that the Boks came back from their last end of year tour with a record that read played five, won one and lost four. After all, the midweek games against Leicester and Saracens were not contested by John Smit’s side, but by a so-called dirt-track selection.

They did, however, get selected by the Springbok selectors and were coached and prepared by the members of the Bok coaching team. In all four of those defeats on that tour – the two others being to France in Toulouse and Ireland in Dublin – poor selection played as much a part as the fatigue that was thrown out as an excuse afterwards.

In the Leicester game the Boks got smashed in the scrums, and it didn’t surprise most critics as the front-row configuration was at best considered dubious. The bulk of the form front-row from the Currie Cup had been ignored. But at least there was action when the penny dropped, for most of the Cheetahs big men were sent an SOS and they flew out to join the tour.

For the game against France there was concern among critics that the Boks should go into a match where clearly the opponents were going to be direct and physical with Adi Jacobs, who had not been in form for the Sharks, out of position at inside centre.

It wasn’t long before the critics had their fears confirmed as it was through Jacobs’s channel that the French made the initial probe that ensured that they gained the momentum they needed. Ryan Kankowski also wasn’t the right No 8 for the kind of game that was always anticipated in Toulouse.

The following week the long debated John Smit at tighthead experiment finally came to an end. Italy outscrummed the Boks for an hour, but when BJ Botha was sent on as a replacement and Smit returned to his old position of hooker, suddenly the Boks could scrum again. And so it went on...

The only top team the Boks have beaten since the last Tri-Nations was France in Cape Town. But maybe that needs to be put into perspective too – that French team went on to get beaten as comprehensively two weeks later by Argentina, who, in turn, lost to Scotland.

So to deny that there is something wrong, that there has been a slide, would mean the Springboks adopting a new animal as their emblem. I won’t name the animal, but it's a bird with a long neck to bury in the sand...

How to get out of this mess? Some would say they can redeem themselves during the home leg of this Tri-Nations season, which to some extent they can. They will not win the competition from where they are now, but three wins will regain some pride.

But what will it mean to the building process towards next year’s World Cup? Everyone knows that the Bulls’ kicking orientated strategy invariably comes up trumps on the Highveld, and even though they quite clearly miss Fourie du Preez, they can probably rely on that edge to give them at least two wins from the remaining three matches.

For a start, can you really imagine the Australians being able to keep up their high tempo game for 80 minutes at altitude? If they did, it would be a first. The last time a team tried to run the Boks ragged at altitude it was the British and Irish Lions in the second test at Loftus. It worked for the first half, but in the second they collapsed in a heap and the Boks were able to pull off one of rugby’s great fightbacks.

All the South African coastal teams would be in agreement with the following point – taking on the Bulls at home with a game that requires all-out attack for 80 minutes is suicide. The Sharks and the Stormers have tried it at stages of their history, they have invariably failed.

However the next World Cup is not being played at altitude, it is being played in New Zealand. It’s why the lessons that have been learned, and the fault lines that have become all too apparent on this most recent tour and through the preceding months cannot be ignored. They must be addressed, and addressed now.