Let’s not be a one-trick pony

The win over the All Blacks would have been hugely satisfying for a Springbok team that was taking a lot of misguided flak from people who just aren’t close enough to understand the process they have been following.

The result was massive in the context of the World Cup, for while up to this past weekend there were reasons why failure to win could be excused, the Bok players knew a four zip losses-to-wins ratio would have left them heading to New Zealand under tremendous pressure.

Of course, international sport is all about winning and losing, so the reaction when a team loses is understandable. But over the past week the words of former Bok coach Nick Mallett, when describing the reaction of the South African media to victory and defeat, have often crossed my mind.

It was Mallett’s view that us hacks were often way too quick with the purple prose, praising players unduly after just one good performance, and being equally too quick to go the other way by laying in the sledge-hammer when a team lost. It wasn’t always black and white, he said, but sometimes grey.

This season has been grey. The defeats weren’t worthy of the national crisis some made them out to be, and neither was this last victory a cause for massive national celebration.

To those who are regular readers of my columns, it shouldn’t require a degree in psycho-analysis to figure out why I have been less critical of the Peter de Villiers regime this year. The argument was always that De Villiers lacked a heavyweight rugby brain in his management group. He does have that now, for – rightly or wrongly – I think Rassie Erasmus is a rugby genius.

There are issues though that should temper the wave of optimism sweeping through the nation since the Port Elizabeth game. And that is not just a reference to the truth that the All Blacks in PE were a similar under-strength team to the one South Africa sent on the away leg.

The two most important issues are ones that have been the talking points for most of the year – the captaincy debate and the argument about who should play first choice flyhalf. Even now, after the win over the All Blacks and just one day before the World Cup squad announcement, they are far from resolved.

While John Smit was long ago installed as squad captain for the World Cup, and I was in agreement with that call, Bismarck du Plessis’ massive game at the weekend coupled with Victor Matfield’s sound on-field captaincy just sets up the Boks for a repeat of the unsatisfactory two-captain debacle that blighted the Sharks’ Super Rugby season.

If Smit is happy to take on a mostly off-field leadership role, with Matfield being recognised as the ‘on-field captain’, then it may not be an issue. But I get the feeling sometimes that it may have been more of an issue at the Sharks than the Sharks coaches let on.

While it may seem I have departed my senses when I suggest the flyhalf position is STILL up for debate, it should be. Brilliant though Morne Steyn was in Port Elizabeth with his kicking game, it was evident from the press box that he was taking the ball way too far back to bring those around him into the game on attack. It was why the Bok backs looked even less potent as an attacking force in Port Elizabeth than they did in Durban.

Jean de Villiers said in an interview ahead of the Stormers clash with Crusaders earlier this year that his team would have to score tries as the Crusaders have too many X-factor players not to score some themselves against even the best defensive system.

With the All Blacks that is even more the case, and my crystal ball since the PE win has been throwing up horrible images of the Boks dominating the first 50 to 60 minutes of a World Cup semifinal to lead 9-0 or 12-3 through penalty kicks and then the All Blacks, through two moments of inspired magic, winning it through tries. Had the Jimmy Cowan try been allowed at Nelson Mandela, the All Blacks could well have overturned what at one stage had been a 15-point deficit. That underlines my concern.

Matfield and Fourie du Preez both spoke in the build-up to the PE match about the need to bring a balance of kicking and attacking rugby to the mix. If Patrick Lambie is passed fit to go to the World Cup it might offer some sort of solution, as when he is at fullback he can bring the required attacking dynamic by slotting into first receiver in second or third phase.

But failing that, Butch James still looks the best equipped to bring the balance that is needed, as his kicking game is not that poor and he is an infinitely better attacker than Steyn is.

Fortunately the Boks have plenty of rugby ahead of them before they get to the hoped-for semifinal against New Zealand. In that time some of these issues will sort themselves out, and hopefully James will be given another opportunity to stake a claim. At least then the Bok management have a proper perspective on whether or not they were right when they initially penciled him in as the starting flyhalf.

It would be naïve to suggest the Boks can completely reinvent themselves at this late stage and take on a possession-orientated running game. The basic template that won the PE game was the right one. But they do need to be able to vary it more, and I am not sure that with Steyn at No 10 they are not condemning themselves to being a one-trick pony.