Building should not mean losing

It would be madness to expect Springbok coach Jake White to select the same team for all three of the home matches that start with the Mandela Challenge game in Johannesburg on Saturday.

Three big matches like that in successive weeks has to take a massive toll on the team, and the Boks are at a disadvantage to the Australians, who play two games and then rest for a fortnight before their next clash, and the New Zealanders. The latter have a nice long break between the end of the series against the British and Irish Lions and their first Tri-Nations engagement in Cape Town.

It is in light of this that the selection for the Mandela Challenge match should be viewed. The Boks desperately want to retain the Tri-Nations trophy they won amidst such fanfare last year. To do that, they must win both their home games, including the August 6 clash with New Zealand at Newlands.

But while it is right, and maybe unavoidable, that White selects a team for the Mandela Challenge match which might be some way from being his first choice combination, what I cannot agree with is the view being peddled in various media that South Africans should be patient and should therefore somehow be prepared to accept defeat at Ellis Park.

That is garbage. The view that South Africa are champions at getting hysterical over nothing when it comes to their rugby does not stand up to the reality, which is that but for last year and 1998, the Springboks and the Super 12 teams have consistently underperformed and underachieved.

I say underperformed and underachieved as the country has shown at age-group level on several occasions during the past six years that there is plenty of raw talent available.

So while there is validity in the argument that Clive Woodward took several knocks before building his World Cup winning England team (although it is also complete nonsense that the British press were accepting of this, for they weren’t), the argument that “we must be patient because we are building” gets very tired when it is repeated 10 years in a row.

Virtually every Springbok coach has used this argument at some stage. Rudolf Straeuli, after every defeat, used to refer to the World Cup in 2003 as the main goal, rendering all else that happened before it as relatively insignificant in terms of match results. For a while he even tried to convince us that the 53-3 defeat at Twickenham in 2002 was nothing to worry about and the rematch in Perth 11 months later would show that the Boks were hiding something.

As for his predecessor, Harry Viljoen…well, few will forget how often he justified defeat by saying it was “part of a process”.

My point is that if the match the Boks are playing on a given Saturday is just “part of a process”, then this information should be publicised before the fans fork out R325 for their ticket. Maybe it should be printed on the back of the ticket: “Remember to be kind to your team today. If they lose, it is just part of a process”.

Sorry, rebuilding phases are part of professional sport. Every team requires time and patience in order to be moulded together. But the most important objective of professional sport is to win, and the objective must always be to win the next match that you are playing. If nothing else, you owe it to the paying patrons and the millions who invest their time by watching on television.

If the Boks lose on Saturday, I just hope White is not surprised by “the hysteria” that follows the defeat. For if he is, then he wasn’t very well informed when he took his current job – a negative reaction to defeat, particularly a home defeat at Ellis Park, was something that was always going to come with the territory.

It is necessary in the modern era to implement rotation policies, the best available team cannot always play. But the expectation should always be to win. The Bok team for Saturday does not lack for experience. All the players have been training together in squad sessions for two months, which is longer than most of White’s predecessors have had when not on tour.

And this is why it would be wrong to think that rebuilding means defeat is acceptable.

More than 50 000 South Africans will be going to Ellis Park in the hope of seeing the Boks belt Australia. If that doesn’t happen, it does not mean the coach has to be sacked, but the paying patrons will have a right to be upset. Wanting your team to win, and thinking it is a matter of life and death, is the foundation upon which professional sport is built.

If you don't want this to be so then tell us, and we will find something else to do on Saturday afternoon.