Time to look beyond the results

SA Rugby president Silas Nkanunu has gone on record saying that the Springboks need to achieve a minimum of third place at this years Rugby World Cup if coach Rudolf Straeuli is to retain his job.

That would require the Boks to beat New Zealand on Saturday in their quarterfinal and then go on to win at least one other match before coming home - either the semi-final, which would take them to the final, or, if they lose the semi, the play-off for third and fourth place.

The logic behind Nkanunu's reasoning is clear. The Boks achieved third place at the 1999 event and they have to match that effort to be satisfied with their performance.

For his part, Straeuli appears to feel he has done enough already to retain his position. He was quoted in newspapers the other day saying that this young Springbok team is on the brink of becoming great and the current management should be retained at least until 2005, which is when Straeuli's contract expires.

If you were to ask me, both attitudes are wrong, and the South African rugby bosses need to be more scientific in determining the way forward beyond RWC 2003.

Making the semi-final, which would guarantee at least a place in the play-off for third, does not represent success. When the Boks returned from Cardiff in 1999 most South Africans felt the team had failed.

They had along the way beaten two big teams. But was the win over New Zealand in the third place play-off really something to celebrate? I saw the Kiwis in Cardiff in the buildup to that game, and they were clearly shattered after their unexpected semi-final exit from the main competition at the hands of France.

To them, the third place play-off meant nothing as they had come to the tournament to win it and anything else just wasn't good enough. As England and France, the two likely opponents in a play-off game, are also at the World Cup to win, and not just to make the semi-finals, they would probably be as distracted if forced into a meaningless play-off.

The 1999 coach Nick Mallett was kept on, but just a few months later SA Rugby decided that he was going nowhere and they axed him. Of course, by then they had found the excuse they may have been looking for in that Mallett's comments about ticket prices left him in a tenuous position with regards the terms of his contract.

Ironically, Mallett had just changed the team's style away from the Wallaby/Brumbie model he had been trying to copy, and former All Black coach Laurie Mains was one who felt Mallett had learned from his mistake and the Boks were about to turn the corner.

But SA Rugby felt justified because the Boks had again come last in the Tri-Nations. They were basing their move on the cold hard facts presented by the statistics. Carel du Plessis, Mallett's predecessor and also a victim of the axe, made an interesting point about sticking too rigidly to the wins and losses column in determining the future of a Springbok coach.

Du Plessis won just three out of his seven matches in charge, but in his last test the team ran riot against Australia and posted a record 61-22 victory.

Speaking in a Q and A interview in SA Rugby magazine, Du Plessis says he was trying to make a radical change to the Springbok playing pattern, and his bosses should have realised that this would not bring immediate results.

I was not one who supported Du Plessis at the time, but he does make a good point. Those who appointed him did so after reading what was described as an impressive deposition on where South African rugby should be going.

As they knew that the Boks would be making a fundamental shift under Du Plessis, surely they realised when they appointed him that there might be some initial hiccups? That brings us back to Straeuli. His future with the Boks should be determined not by the results at the World Cup, but by where he is taking the national team.

For a start, as both England and New Zealand are great teams, a quarterfinal exit on the basis of defeats to those two giants of the modern game should not on their own be the basis for Straeuli's dismissal.

If he really has turned the corner, and he really is bringing in a new way of playing that has been the product of a grand plan, then it would be patently wrong for the SA Rugby management to just stick rigidly to the terms dictated by any performance clause on his contract.

At the same time, advancing past Saturday does not mean everything is right either. Even winning the World Cup, as the Boks were to discover when they lost a home series to the All Blacks 12 months after their 1995 triumph, does not necessarily mean all is well.

If you want future success you need to be reasonably sure that the coach is on a path that will ensure that future success. That means those who hire and fire need to sit down with the incumbent and be given an insight into what he means when he talks about a new way of playing.

In Straeuli's case, they need to be convinced of a grand plan that most supporters and critics are still in the dark about. In assessing his suitability for the position, SA Rugby must take a critical look at his track record, and the way his supposed plan has evolved over the last 18 months.

They must look not just at the results of what would be one or two big World Cup games, but at what his plan was this time last year, what his plan was six months ago, and what his plan was six weeks ago. Who were his players a year ago, who were they six months ago, and who are they now? Why was Danie Rossouw not in the initial 40, why did Derick Hougaard not get blooded in the Tri-Nations or before that?

We keep hearing that one of the reasons the Boks lost to England was because the Bok players lacked experience and the combinations were not as settled. But why was that so?

Who chooses the Bok team and what became of those experienced players? More recently we were told that the Boks still needed to settle on a backline combination, which was the last stumbling block to them becoming a great team. Why is the search still continuing at this late stage of a World Cup for which Straeuli was supposedly building towards for almost two years?

If the Boks do beat New Zealand on Saturday, they will do so with a flyhalf who the public would like to have seen blooded back in June, but who was ignored until shortly before the squad's departure for Australia.

Why did Hougaard not play against England ahead of Louis Koen, who had been shown up many times already this season and had all those failing cruelly exposed on the critical day in Perth? Maybe then the Boks could have taken the high road and would not now be facing the nigh impossible task of having to beat New Zealand, Australia and one of England or France in successive weeks.

While Straeuli asked to be judged on the World Cup, where defence has become one of the Bok strongpoints, why was this aspect of the game not sorted out 12 months ago. Maybe then the morale of the South African rugby public would not have been destroyed by those record defeats to England and to New Zealand.

Regardless of where the Boks end up in this World Cup, another important stakeholder should also be consulted before SA Rugby commits to another two years with Straeuli in charge. I am talking here about the players.

The outspoken comments by Cobus Visagie, who said two weeks ago that the Boks had no plan and who commiserated with the players in the squad, was not the bitter ranting of a lone voice in the wilderness. Straeuli's man-management has clearly left a lot to be desired and the lack of confidence in the national coach from the broader body of South African players, most of whom have contacts in the current squad, is something that needs to be addressed.

If I was given a rand for every time a player in South Africa has told me over the past few months that if the Boks win the World Cup it would be despite Straeuli and not because of him, then I would be a millionaire. And I would be a dollar millionaire if I did the same every time someone in the past week has come to me and said they have ambivalent feelings about Saturday's game against the All Blacks. Yes, they want to beat the All Blacks, but no, they don't want the wrong message to be sent out about the ability of the coach.

Something else that needs to be questioned is Straeuli's commitment to transformation. He keeps imploring people to look back at his record, which assumedly means we should look at his time with Natal. But what is happening now? There was only one black player in the 22 that did duty against Samoa and it is likely to be the same for the All Black game.

That is unacceptable, and if you look at all the players who did appear in the recent Currie Cup, the argument that he did not have enough to choose from does not hold water.

When Joe van Niekerk was forced home through injury, why was someone like Solly Tyibilika not called as a replacement? These are all questions that need to be asked and answered. If he can prove conclusively that he has seen the errors of his previous ways and learned from his mistakes, then he should continue. The experience he has picked up in 18 months would then be crucial to South Africa's future success.

But he should not be retained on the basis that the Boks made the semi-finals of the World Cup. If you look at the fixture list you would see that attaining that goal is an easier task than doing well in the Tri-Nations, where the Boks also win just one big game every year.

Straeuli has said he wants to be judged on the World Cup, but if the Boks don't win it (in other words lift the Webb Ellis trophy) then his entire record needs to be placed under scrutiny. And when it does, the Perth game against England must be seen for what it was - a 19 point defeat which was the consequence of several tactical errors and coaching mistakes.