Regaining a bit of perspective

It was in my first year of rugby writing that I first heard the phrase "it comes with the territory".

It came from a colleague who had to listen to me complain about how some newspaper sub-editor had botched his precise of my club preview to the extent that he had Hugh Reece-Edwards, a long-time stalwart of Durban Crusaders, transferred into the DHS Old Boys backline.

I was not sure then that it was an adequate excuse, for when your name is attached to a story like that, it is cause for acute embarrasment. To me it was just not on that the readers were duped into believing that the chief rugby correspondent of the Natal Mercury did not know Reece-Edwards was a Crusaders man.

Springbok coach Jake White did not use the same phrase on Saturday night when, after his team's agonising defeat against England, he was asked about the effect the pressures of the job were having on him.

"Pressure is something you always have to accept in this job. When you are coaching a team like South Africa, where rugby is a national sport, then you have to accept there will always be pressure," said White.

Maybe some of that pressure will ease a bit after the narrow defeat to England. I hope so, for while I think that White is making a lot of mistakes, the performance at Twickenham did perhaps bring some much-needed perspective.

White is wrong to ignore the value of a specialist fetcher (Pierre Spies is patently not a specialist fetcher) and he has also left some of the form players back in South Africa. Were they here, they could have made a massive difference to the Springbok chances of winning.

We should also not get duped into believing that the England team that squeaked home against the Boks was the same one that lifted the World Cup three years ago. Much has changed in the land of the world champions, who are now listing quite precariously between sixth and seventh in the IRB rankings.

But it would also be an extremely ignorant person who for a moment assumes that the Bok side that played at Twickenham was anything but an experimental, second-string team. England, poor though they were, played the game at full-strength. To my mind, despite the weekend result, if any rugby nation is in trouble at the moment, it is England.

The Springboks were said to be in crisis after the defeat to Ireland, and White made some inexcusable mistakes that cost the team any chance of being competitive in the game.

But let's be honest - just a few months ago everyone was asking for the coach to choose an experimental team and to move away from the tried and trusted. Most significantly, the Board of SA Rugby were among those who felt White needed to spread his net and include new players.

While their idea of an experimental team may not have coincided with that of White, they did make a decision on the matter when they gave White the okay to proceed with his plan. So, it makes no sense, and would just be completely unfair, if they now decided that White should be removed from his position because of the results on this tour.

When you have an experimental team, what is important is that the side shows an improvement from one week to the next, that it becomes more competitive.

That happened in the seven days between Dublin and London, and the unearthing of Francois Steyn, a selection most critics disagreed with, has ensured that this tour will not be in vain from a buildup to the World Cup viewpoint.

Steyn showed at Twickenham that he could very easily become the next Andre Joubert, and Percy Montgomery, one of White's long-time favourites, is no longer certain of his position.

It appears I was also very wrong about something last week too. On the Friday before Twickenham I attacked White's selection of Butch James and the axing of André Pretorius.

I did so not because I don't rate James, because I most certainly do, but because he has hardly played this year.

I said in the preview that, given his long absences and lack of match practice, James would be a very "special living organism" if he plays well. Welcome to life as a special living organism, Butch.

Pretorius, by contrast, was all over the place in his 20 minutes on the field. He looked jittery, unsure of himself, and he made mistakes. Perhaps his axing has precipitated a crisis of confidence. If so, that is a pity, for he is perhaps the most talented of all the South African flyhalves.

But the point is that White now knows that Pretorius's previous failures in the northern hemisphere were probably not just a one-off. And he knows after watching James that a Henry Honiball type of flyhalf is the one that best suits the country in northern conditions.

He would not know this if he did not experiment, and experimentation will always carry the risk of what happened in Dublin last week.

Like it or not, modern rugby is too dominated by the World Cup. It is not something that White chose, it is just the way that it is. If the people who run South African rugby don't want it thus, they need to say so.

They also need to be much more honest about the brief that White was given on this tour. If he was told to choose an experimental team, then they have no business to even introduce the thought of giving the coach the axe.

For if they did give him licence, and they now deem the policy to be wrong, then they should surely vacate their positions too.