Don’t read too much into it

There were times during the thrilling South African Super 14 derby between the Sharks and the Bulls where I started to become quite concerned about the Springbok chances of beating the British and Irish Lions.

It was not because first Wynand Olivier and then Ruan Pienaar were helped from the field during the match. Neither did it have anything to do with the enthralling entertainment, or the quality of the South African players.

There are three Kiwi teams in the semifinals, and only one South African side, but the local teams in this year’s Super 14 have provided more than enough quality to believe that Peter de Villiers can assemble a team good enough not only to beat the Lions, but to whitewash them.

The note of concern, however, has everything to do with the Springbok experience in the Tri-Nations last year, where there was so much talk about quicker paced games that it confused the players and contributed in no small part to the 19-0 drubbing dished out by the All Blacks at Newlands.

What was concerning was the number of times during the Durban game I heard people asking the question, when the Sharks were throwing everything into all-out attack, why they had not been doing this all season? It seemed only a short step from there to that fallacious argument that South Africa can play a quick paced game.

To me, what the Durban game proved was actually the opposite. While it looked entertaining, there was far too much ball lost in the contact, and in the second half there were times when the option taking of both sides seemed to suffer because of the quicker tempo.

Yes, the Sharks did score four tries, but they were more than a score behind before the fourth try, which was essentially scored after the game had already been lost.

While the Bulls won the game because in the end they played the percentages better than the Sharks, it was also a match where, for whatever reason, the Bulls also did not play their usual tactical game. For some reason they appeared to be duped at times into playing the same way the Sharks did.

This season has shown that when defensive orientated sides play attacking oriented sides, it is the defensive, and territory driven teams that win. Ask the Chiefs, whose defeats this season have come to the Waratahs, Crusaders, Sharks and Bulls – all of whom were playing a more conservative game at the time. This was one of the reasons why the Chiefs, after starting off with a run from everywhere intent against the Stormers recently, suddenly reverted to a policy of kick the ball back.

One of the reasons the last few weeks of the Super 14 season have been so intriguing has been because teams have been forced by their log situation into adjusting their strategies. In a New Zealand radio interview I did the other day, it was suggested to me that it has improved the product, and it may have.

It certainly provided the spectators at Coca-Cola Park last Friday with a spectacle that they might not otherwise have enjoyed. The Waratahs have for so long revolved their game around their defence, but it was noticeable how almost absent their defence became when they committed themselves to carrying the ball against the Lions in the quest for the four tries that they needed.

They got the four tries, but had the final pass not been called forward in the build-up to what initially appeared a good Lions try at the end of the game, the Waratahs might have ended up in the same situation as the Sharks did – on the losing side in a game where they scored four tries.

Those who were around in 1997 for the last series between the Boks and the Lions might understand my concern better than those who were either too young back then, or just don’t remember it. The Boks actually scored three times as many tries as the Lions in that series, but they lost it 2-1.

The Sharks were forced into playing like they did at the weekend by their log situation. In a way it also took the pressure off. They were going for broke, they were not scared of trying things. They just had to, they had no choice.

But in a test match there is a different pressure, the knowledge of where a defeat in the opening game will leave the loser is going to have an inhibiting effect on the players, whether they like it or not. Rugby people often refer to finals rugby, and test rugby is no different. It has nothing to do with the ELVs, we just have to think back to the last World Cup, when there were no ELVs, to be reminded of that.

My hunch is that Lions coach Ian McGeechan would love the Boks to play against his team like the Sharks did on Saturday. For if the Boks get the same result against the Lions as the Sharks did against the Bulls, there will be no consolation bonus point. They would just have lost a very important test match.