Pick overseas based players

It was hard to hide some feeling of smugness when Frans Steyn slotted those three long range penalties in Hamilton.

Admittedly it wasn’t his goalkicking that had prompted me to criticise his omission from the team that started the two test matches in Australia, but rather the length of his field kick. It was an indispensible part of the Springbok success in the home leg of the Tri-Nations, and it should never have been omitted in Perth and Brisbane. But he also just brings so many other special qualities to the party, and if any player has the X-factor, he does.

Steyn has often been criticised over the years, and rightly so. The mistake he made in the last move of the 2007 Super 14 final, when he just needed to kick out to win the game for the Sharks but instead opted to keep it in play, leading ultimately to Bryan Habana’s winning try for the Bulls, won’t have been completely forgotten by many Durbanites.

Last year, when he played for a Barbarians team against Australia as a flyhalf, there would have been many around the world tearing their hair out in frustration. He was the breakdown in an otherwise star studded back division.

But Steyn has produced enough times in pressure situations to erase any suggestion of him being a choker. On the contrary, he has established his BMT credentials over and over, and might well be a better player in the really big ones than he is in lesser games.

For instance, just a few weeks after the mistake that cost the Sharks in 2007, it was Steyn’s two late drop-goals that won a Tri-Nations test against Australia at Newlands when he came on as a replacement.

Lest it be forgotten, he also kicked some crucial long range penalties in the World Cup, where he played in a new position, inside centre, in the absence of the injured Jean de Villiers. Mention of De Villiers cues another of those special players that has made this era a particularly fertile one for South African rugby. With other world class players such as Fourie du Preez and Victor Matfield in the side, perhaps it is understandable that De Villiers’s value to the side has been overshadowed.

But it was fitting that De Villiers’s trade-mark intercept try was the final scoring act for the Boks in their epic win over the All Blacks in Hamilton that clinched them their third Tri-Nations title. For it might well be his final act in a Springbok jersey unless coach Peter de Villiers relaxes his stance on overseas based players.

And the same can be said for Steyn’s goalkicks. Were Steyn not on the field in Hamilton on Saturday, the Boks would probably have lost. It was not just the nine points that came from his boot that was so significant, but the psychological impact it had on the All Blacks.

Some of the Kiwi players admitted afterwards that the first kick, early in the game, knocked much of the stuffing out of their composure. As Jerome Kaino related, after his first kick skipper Richie McCaw had to bark out something to the effect of “Right, now we can’t make any mistakes within 60 metres of our line”.

But his field kicking is Steyn’s most valuable asset, and was the reason that former Bok coach Jake White said long before this international season started that fullback was Steyn’s best position.

“When you have someone with a boot like Steyn’s standing at the back, what team would want to kick it?” asked White.

What team indeed? The Australian kicking game worked a charm in Brisbane in the only Bok defeat of this Tri-Nations season. It might not have had Steyn been back there to kick the ball back, and perhaps more importantly, to add his pyschological presence, both as an intimidating factor to the opposition and a settling one for his teammates.

Where Steyn has been immense in the last line of defence, De Villiers has been just as important to a midfield that confirmed itself in this tournament as the best in the world. In retrospect, and this is not meant to be unkind, it might have been a lucky break for the Boks that injury prevented them from going through with the intention of playing Adrian Jacobs at inside centre in the Tri-Nations opener in Bloemfontein.

Such a move would have brought a different dynamic not only to the midfield, but to the team strategy as a whole. We saw in Hamilton the effect it can have on opposition when they are forced to start thinking they cannot run through the Bok defensive wall, and the physicality of De Villiers and Jaque Fourie was instrumental in suffocating New Zealand and Australia in five of the six matches.

But by the time the Boks get to Toulouse for the first game of their end of year tour, De Villiers will be playing for Munster and Steyn will be playing out of Paris.

The Bok coach has said that he will only choose overseas based players if there is an emergency. In the case of Steyn and centre De Villiers it may not be an emergency, but if this Bok team is going to sustain its current success and live up to the expectations and standards that have now been set, it might well be a necessity.