Early physical battle needs Bismarck

It’s been a weird couple of days with a spate of unusual celebrations taking place in various parts of the world. In Britain we saw a celebration because a guy was getting married, on the other side of the Atlantic there were celebrations because another guy was killed, and here in South Africa there have been some muted celebrations at the discovery that some old guys still have a pulse.

Maybe we shouldn’t get too carried away about the Bulls’ win over the Chiefs. It’s hardly as if the Chiefs possess what you would call a world-beating pack, so they were never going to really test the flaws that become obvious in the Bulls' game-plan when their forwards and all-round physicality are fronted.

It was good though to see Victor, Bakkies and company back in the rollicking form of old, and although it was only really for a quarter or at best a third of the game that they cooked, hopefully it will bring some of the missing confidence back. I wrote in a newspaper column at the weekend that the Bulls pack should be renamed the Titanic for it has enough passengers and is heading in a downward direction, but at least the ship has yet to sink beneath the waves, and until it does, there is hope.

There is definitely more hope for the Boks right now than there seemed to be a short while ago. The main source of my optimism is not the Bulls’ performance or even that of the Stormers’ Springbok midfield duo, but the recruitment of Rassie Erasmus as a technical adviser.

Such an appointment is what the Boks have been crying out for over a couple of seasons now as it means there will be less emphasis on the senior players having to double-up as coaches.

Yet the hopefulness extends further than that, for there were also signs that Sonny Bill Williams, the man expected to make such a big impact at the World Cup, is indeed mortal. That might seem an odd thing to say when Williams was all over the Western Force for most of the Crusaders’ match in Perth, but that might be exactly it – the massive centre is such an imposing player that he does try things which others wouldn’t.

That means he makes mistakes that the opposition can pounce on, as the Force did on Saturday. Ashwin Willemse described him as a high risk and high reward player and that is probably the best way of putting it. At the moment we South Africans are clutching at straws, and there is a straw to be had there, even if rather a thin one.

Another thing the Boks might have been pleased with was the way the Crusaders became more conservative when the Force came back into the game on the scoreboard. Is that a sign that pressure, which will be much bigger in a World Cup knock-out fixture, might force the All Blacks into playing a different game when the crunch arrives? It’s what everyone appears to be hoping for.

With John Smit now rightly confirmed as Bok captain, however, perhaps the big pointer towards what to do and not to do at the World Cup came in the derby at Newlands. Maybe the Sharks would have lost anyway, but for my money the Sharks made it a whole lot easier for the Stormers to get in the first punch in the battle for early physical ascendancy when they decided against starting with Bismarck du Plessis.

If there is one Sharks player the Stormers seem to be more scared of than others it is the younger of the Du Plessis brothers, certainly on past evidence. And the one thing that a team playing the Stormers needs to make sure of from the outset is that they don’t allow the Cape team to settle.

Du Plessis’ aggressive, physical intensity was missed in the early stages of the brutal derby, and although he didn't make much difference when he did finally come on, you could argue that by then it was too late. The Stormers had settled, they had long since gained the physical ascendancy.

Sharks coach John Plumtree does have a policy of reintroducing players who have been injured through the bench, but given the importance of the game, this was possibly a time to waive that policy and ensure that the best team started.

It’s something the Boks are going to have to be very careful about when it comes time to select the starting side for the big games at the World Cup. On current form, starting without Bismarck, who doubles as an auxiliary flanker with his ability to affect turnovers, would be an unnecessary risk against a team like New Zealand.