Bok ‘A’ team camp is no secret

There seems to be a lot of negativity following the Springboks' defeat to Australia in the opening match of the Tri-Nations. In my view it is misplaced.

Sure, there were disturbing aspects to the defeat, such as the way the Wallabies ran through the Bok defences. This was not a first – it happened every time the Boks played Australia last year too. The only time the Boks did not look vulnerable and under threat against the Wallabies in the 2010 Tri-Nations was when the Boks had the ball, such as in the thrilling 20-minute fightback in the middle stages of the match in Bloemfontein.

That said, the levels of organisation on attack weren’t great at the Olympic Stadium either. And the best method of attack for the Boks remains keeping the ball close to the forwards and driving it up the middle. I can imagine there are people out there who wonder why the Bok coaches haven’t been able to introduce anything new.

I became a lot more positive about the Bok chances at the World Cup when I heard that Rassie Erasmus was to be involved as a technical adviser. And by all accounts the other management members have responded well to his input, with a lot more planning going into this international season than has been the case previously.

So where has the Erasmus influence come through? How has the planning paid off? The answer to that question is that it cannot be answered now, for the simple reason that Erasmus is not with the Boks in Australasia. And neither are the top players who have been the focus of the coaches in the build-up to the new international season.

I read somewhere earlier this week that there is some speculation that the Bok ‘A’ team has hived off on a secret training camp. There is nothing secret about it – Erasmus told me when I interviewed him for SA Rugby Magazine about two months ago that his major onfield coaching input with the Boks will be the same as it was in 2007, when he worked with the Bok players during a camp held when Jake White had taken the under-strength squad to Australasia.

The top Bok players are in Rustenburg at present, working with Erasmus. You can bet that Stormers defensive guru Jacques Nienaber will be popping in and out of the camp often enough to work on the defensive organisation that has been all at sea in the last two seasons against southern hemisphere opposition.

We shouldn’t need to trot out the Stormers defensive stats here to underline what Erasmus and Nienaber’s involvement could mean to the Boks in this crucial aspect of rugby, an aspect that becomes even more critical when a World Cup arrives.

So now there are probably people moaning that all this is very well, but aren’t the top players all supposed to be injured? The answer to that is that it comes down to semantics – Victor Matfield and company are not injured in the sense that they need to lie on their backs with their legs in plaster and held up by a pulley like you see in those old war movies.

But common sense suggests that they all may well be injured in the sense that while right now they may be ready for a training camp where they work on strategy, they are not ready to play in a high-intensity Tri-Nations match. Or put another way, they need a decent break sometime between the ridiculously long Super Rugby competition and the start of the World Cup if they are to feature in that tournament, and the away leg of the Tri-Nations, as was proven in 2007, is a good time to take that break.

If Bok coach Peter de Villiers had taken his first-string team to Australia and New Zealand, maybe it would be the first-choice players who would now be sustaining the injuries that the touring team are, and maybe the wave of injuries being suffered by the Boks is an indication of just how much the players do need a break. The South African conference in Super Rugby was brutal.

De Villiers did the right thing in leaving the best players behind now. What he did wrong, and continues to do wrong, as does skipper John Smit, is to keep denying that this is a second-string side. The “B is for Boks” is all baloney, and surely both Div and Smitty know that. They should stop doing it, they should also admit the top team is in camp back home.

It is false expectation that gives rise to the sort of over-reaction that is happening at the moment, and pointing people to the fact that the Bok World Cup team is busy preparing as the other side tours Down Under might bring some much-needed sense of perspective.

Those who think it is time to go into mourning because of the defeat in Sydney are forgetting that the second-string Bok team that played in Australia in 2007 was also outplayed. And they were outplayed the following week in New Zealand too.

Who remembers those games? I find it hard to recall one single moment of really positive play from the Boks on that leg of the 2007 Tri-Nations, and yet two months later the Bok first-choice players won the World Cup at a canter.

The past week has reminded me of just how fickle the rugby world can be. A week ago the Wallabies were under pressure because their second-string team lost to Samoa. Their first-choice team showed there is a big difference between first choice and second choice.

Would a Wallaby B team, like the one that played Samoa, do any better against a Bok full-strength team than the Bok side did last Saturday? If the game was played in Johannesburg, the South African equivalent of Sydney, I imagine not, for I seem to recall a 53-8 scoreline there a few years back...