Boks need to close that gap

A quick troll through the internet brought a reminder: The latest column must be changed, and immediately. It won’t do after the Paris test to have an opinion piece up stating that Jake White was right about opting for Meyer Bosman as his flyhalf on this tour.

Except that I haven’t changed my mind about that. Bosman did not have a good game in Paris, but none of the flyhalves back home that have been ignored would have provided White with the creativity he needed from his pivot at Stade de France.

With the exception of the injured Andre Pretorius, all the No10s on the Currie Cup circuit showed that they either had a good kicking game (Willem de Waal, Derick Hougaard) or a good running game (think Brent Russell), but none of them really have both.

Bosman, now that we have taken a second look, does have a lot to learn. He needs to gain the confidence necessary for him to commit opposition defenders more than he has on this tour. If he ever wants to be a Henry Honiball, he is also going to have to become more direct in his running, and stop crabbing across the field and cramping the outside backs.

His kicking was not good at Stade de France. As it would have been a tactic against France as stupid as the one in Marseilles in 2002 when the forwards were not instructed to contest the lineouts, one imagines that the long kicks straight into French hands was not an instruction.

If they were, it backfired horribly because the ball was returned with interest almost every time and there was never anyone back to cover and prevent the ball from rolling into touch.

But Bosman did show some good touches both with his hands and his feet against Wales, and the Welsh win over Australia this past weekend might just put that performance into better perspective. The Welsh were hammered by the All Blacks in their first game after a long break, but they are the Six Nations champions, and it was a far tougher test match baptism than some people appear to think it was.

The point about Bosman is that he is only 20, and has plenty of time to learn. Considering White selected him after so few first class appearances at flyhalf, it is debatable whether you can even call the Paris test a failure for him. He has shown that he possesses plenty of skill, and you can see his potential to provide an extra dimension not provided by the two first choice flyhalves.

So yes, White was right in trying something different. Where he might have been wrong, looking back admittedly with the benefit of hindsight, is that he did not try more innovations or experiments elsewhere in the squad during the course of the tour.

For instance, seeing he spoke so much about it as an option last year and earlier this season, why did we have to wait until the last 10 minutes of the final game to see Jean de Villiers move to flyhalf. His play there in that time was a revelation, though it should not have been a surprise to White, as he has always considered this an option.

Where the Boks differ most from the All Blacks at the moment is that the New Zealanders are more prepared at the moment to gamble, to put everything on the line. Justin Marshall had a go at his former teammates in a newspaper column in England recently for not possessing a Plan B, but the point for coach Graham Henry is that he wants to see how far he can go with Plan A first before he deploys any other strategies.

The Boks were way below full strength by the time they got to Stade de France for the big match of their tour, with the crucial halfback combination being the most inexperienced part of the team.

The All Blacks were also way off strength for most of their games, as they were last year in the build-up to their rout of France.

The difference though is that for the All Blacks it was all done by design, Henry is changing his team to ensure that it constantly evolves. Had White had all the players who played in the Tri-Nations available to him, you would probably have seen the same team, with very little variation, play in all the northern hemisphere tests.

I appreciate that the All Blacks are a cut above the rest at the moment, and that as Marshall says, the only two teams they are at all vulnerable to are the Springboks and England because of the style they employ.

But if you want to be the best you have to be able to match and emulate the best, and you have to say that the All Blacks have returned to New Zealand with significantly more confident international players to choose from in 2007 than the South Africans have.

It may be unfair to blame White for this. South Africa is a strange country when it comes to supporting rugby, and we saw the outcry there was when he selected Bosman to tour. Had he left Victor Matfield at home or on the bench for crucial games, there would have been a massive furore.

If however the Boks want to set their bar at the highest possible level, the evolution of the team, their playing style and the players who fill the vital positions may have to start happening a lot faster than it is now.