Lane made same mistake as Mac

There was a time when this column vigorously defended Tim Lane's involvement with the Springboks.

Back in December 2001, those who blamed all South Africa's rugby ills on the nationality of the Springbok assistant coach had to be challenged.

The xenophobia that seemed so rife in South African rugby at the time was stupid, and it still is. In the professional age the fact a coach is being paid a lot of money to do his job tends to override any questions about commitment.

Ability should be everything and nationality should mean nothing. But as we sit here at the start of a 2003 international campaign that will culminate with the World Cup, it seems that while this may be true about the universe as a whole, it may not be true when you are talking about the South African psyche.

And it is for this reason that I will not mount a defence for Lane on this occasion. At least, I will not argue that he should remain with the Boks, for it has become abundantly clear that the "clash of culture" theorists might have been right.

With Lane unlikely to remain in South Africa beyond the next few months (one of the European clubs is sure to snap him up), Laurie Mains remains the only overseas coach to have made a success out of a stint with a local team.

Is that perhaps because of all the foreign coaches, Mains is the one who comes closest to having a South African mindset?

When the Cats started to struggle early in the Super 12, it was said to me by a high ranking official that the Cats would never get it right because "Aussies don't understand that South African players need to be told what to do, they need to be spoonfed all the time and treated like children."

This reminded me of one of Nick Mallett's constant laments during his time in charge of the Boks - he just couldn't get them to think. But it was never quite as bad for Mallett as it was for Ian McIntosh.

In effect the first "foreigner" to coach South Africa, Zimbabwe born McIntosh lost his job in 1994 because he was accused of being lax with discipline. The problem was that McIntosh was used to the Natal culture of the time. Players were treated like adults and were expected to act like adults, and Mac failed to understand that players from other provinces needed military discipline and big stick treatment in order to perform.

Those who understood this psyche were not at all surprised when McIntosh's successor achieved instant success with his "You call me coach or Mr Christie" approach with the players.

Judging from media comments attributed to himself and his assistant, Ray Mordt, Lane may acknowledge now that he made a similar mistake at the Cats to the one McIntosh made with the Boks.

It is easy to look at Lane's results with the Cats and the results that the Boks achieved while he was involved and label him a poor coach. Make no mistake, I had my reservations about him too. For a start, his defences always seemed all over the place and in last year's Tri-Nations even some of the basics of defensive organisation were neglected.

Lane seemed to have an attitude of "We'll learn to run with the ball first and score tries and then worry about defence later". That was all very well if you had no worries about today's result, but a huge problem if you did.

But if Lane is a poor coach why was he ever employed by World Cup winning Wallaby coach Rod MacQueen and why is he so highly regarded in Europe? Was Lane to blame for recent results, or are South Africans just a really odd bunch of people for an outsider to understand?

I tend towards the latter and shudder to think of the embarrasment that we South Africans might have to suffer if Lane goes on to write a book about his career.

He might start off the chapter on his South African sojourn by describing how he was employed by Harry Viljoen to help South Africa develop a team that could play a skilled, running game, but in many instances was landed with selections tailored for the opposite approach.

He would have to describe to incredulous foreign audiences how the Springboks went into the 2001 Tri-nations with a team selected and prepared to carry the ball, but then after one defeat where the Boks won everywhere but on the scoreboard, they selected a kicking flyhalf in Braam van Straaten and changed the whole approach.

Later that same year the selections became so conservative that it was surprising Lane found any employment with the Boks as backline coach at all - he was landed with Louis Koen at flyhalf inside a midfield which included Braam van Straaten and Trevor Halstead (as an outside centre).

But the emphasis on a running game returned when new coach Rudolf Straeuli took over at the start of 2002 and the Springboks went on to score the most tries in the Tri-Nations.

Now it appears we are going back once again to a more conservative game. This inability to make a call and stick with it would be laughable to a foreign audience and I strongly advise any South African who struggles to laugh at himself to avoid any book ever written by Tim Lane.