Why Jake is to blame

The coach tried hard in Dublin on Saturday night to circulate the legend that the players were to blame for the disastrous performance against Ireland.

He did this by saying there was no Plan B, that what went wrong was that the players had not executed Plan A effectively. But Plan A can’t happen if you haven’t chosen the right players to execute it. And it was patently obvious, as it has been for a long time, that White did not do this.

Instead of blaming the players, I feel sorry for them. There is a long list of Springboks from the post-isolation era that have suffered because of the teams and combinations they have found themselves thrust into and forced to play with. So much in rugby depends on the players around you, and frankly, some of the youngsters who played on Saturday didn’t have a chance.

White has a young, experimental team over here on this tour, and because of this, the axe is unlikely to fall on him, even if he goes through the entire trip without a victory, which would leave him with a 33% success rate from the year.

However, having said this, he could have rested the World Cup players and still produced a team better equipped to compete with the Irish than the one that played at the weekend. All he had to do was bring a bit of balance to some of his key combinations, something that was a concern for most critics even before the match.

An unbelievable amount of space has been devoted in the media to the debate about specialist openside flanks, but it will continue to do so just because White is so alone in his view that this type of player is expendable. Without players who can compete on the ground, the ball carriers in the Bok team don’t have a hope of doing what they do best.

As for the forward dominance that was required to negate the need for a fetcher, White was also alone in his view that he had selected a pack that could do that job for him in Dublin.

To put it simply, White did not choose his tight forwards on Currie Cup form. Johan Ackermann played well in the Super 14, but that was seven months ago, since when he has been mostly injured. Albert van den Berg, like several other players, also hasn’t played for a long time.

As for Lawrence Sephaka, he hardly ever played for the Lions in the Currie Cup, and yet was considered good enough to play against Ireland. The mind boggles. When it comes to John Smit and CJ van der Linde, you have to say the same things as what should be said about Jean de Villiers and Bryan Habana.

Keeping players out for two months for a conditioning camp is okay, but then you need to have a warm-up game before you play a big test match. All of those players looked rusty, and it is not surprising.

All of this brings us to the point that White’s culpability goes beyond the selection just for this match. What has put Irish rugby on the ascendancy over the last while is the massive improvements they have made to their club game.

White was right to point to this as one of their strengths, he was wrong to assume that it was because the relationship between the clubs and the Irish union was so strong. The Irish clubs are strong because a lot of emphasis has been placed on the domestic game and on making their teams strong in Europe.

You get the impression with White that he doesn’t care whether the South African teams in the Super 14 are competitive or not – he just wants his chosen players to get through the competition without injury. You can assume this from his selection policy, which is very seldom based on current form or form shown in any domestic or regional competition.

New Zealand rule the world because their baseline is the Super 14. Their teams dominate that competition, the best players play all the games, they don’t complain about fatigue, they don’t continually read in the newspapers their coaches telling everyone that they are tired. Being the best in the world does not release the pressure on Dan Carter to perform his best for the Crusaders.

White, because of his disrespect for what is required to make a country strong, is becoming increasingly marginalised. In Dublin on Saturday night even respected rugby people who have worked closely with him were saying it is time for him to buck up or get out. For the sake of South African rugby, let’s hope he sees the light.