Rassie's learnings from experience and history breaks Bok mould

The Springboks go into the decisive final three weeks of the Rugby World Cup with something that no previous South African national team has done at the global tournament - a coach who has been there before and can thus learn from past mistakes.

It was former All Black coach Laurie Mains, who coached the Golden Lions and Cats for a few seasons, that once summed up one of the enduring problems of South African rugby: “In South Africa no coach is ever allowed to learn from mistakes, he is sacked before he can do that.”

Would Nick Mallett have gone on to correct the mistakes he made in 1999? He was on the way to doing that when he was summarily axed for something as un-rugby related as commenting on ticket prices in 2000.

Okay, so the cycle of players wasn’t that great back then, so maybe winning the 2003 tournament, when England were in a league of their own anyway, was a long shot. But would the Boks have got as bad as they did between the end of 2000 and the end of 2003 had Mallett stayed on? It’s highly doubtful.

It’s hard to blame Rudolf Straeuli entirely for what went wrong in 2003. By his own admission, he was too young and not ready for the job. He went to that World Cup with only his previous playing experience at a World Cup as a reference point. And in that 1995 World Cup he had the strict disciplinarian Kitch Christie as his coach. It was no surprise then that he overdosed the team on discipline and overdid the team building “break them down to bring them together” philosophy with that notorious Staaldraad episode.

NO CARRYING OVER OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Straeuli couldn’t use what happened in 1999 as a reference point as he was coaching at Bedford at the time. The point being that there was no carrying over of intellectual property from four years earlier, just like there’d been none between 1995 and 1999 either. Not in the coaching group.

Indeed, if you look through the management teams that have guided the Springboks through the six World Cups they have competed in up to this one, you will spot only two coaches who went to two. Ray Mordt was in charge of fitness in 1995 and was an assistant coach in 2003, Gert Smal was forwards coach in 2003 and 2007.

That number though has now been doubled. Current head coach Rassie Erasmus was Peter de Villiers’ technical adviser at the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand and Jacques Nienaber, who De Villiers described in his autobiography as a genius, was there then as a defence coach, as he is now.

Erasmus didn’t have selection powers when he was there as a technical adviser, but listening to him speak this past week it does become clear that some of the mistakes made then, and subsequently, have been ingrained in his memory and have motivated a determination not to repeat them.

DETERMINED NOT TO REPEAT DIV'S MISTAKE

De Villiers’ biggest mistake in 2011, one that was repeated by Heyneke Meyer four years later, was to take too many players to the World Cup who were nursing injuries and couldn’t take a full part in training sessions.

Think back - Bakkies Botha was injured early on and then hardly played before eventually being forced to return home just before the quarterfinal, Jean de Villiers was injured early in the tournament and only came back just in time for the quarterfinal, Victor Matfield struggled with injury too. Butch James was constantly undergoing physiotherapy and not playing. And there were others.

Those who were there and spoke to Erasmus during that World Cup will recall his frustration at not being able to work with a full squad of players at training sessions because half of them were undergoing rehabilitation. Those who did speak to him then shouldn’t be surprised to hear that the memory of that frustration directed his selections and may even have played a role in sending Jesse Kriel home with a minor hamstring condition that could probably have been managed but which would have kept him off the training field for another few weeks.

“The one thing we have definitely done differently, and we will see in the next three games whether it has worked or not, is make tough calls in our selections when it came to the balance between experienced guys and semi fit guys and guys who are fully fit and in form,” said Erasmus.

“We had some tough calls to make when it came to selection. Damian Willemse would have been one of the first names I would have written down for selection had he been fully fit. He would have been in as he was a form fullback in Super Rugby and is also a good flyhalf. But I made a decision to only select players who were match fit and available. And Damian wasn’t at the time of selection. He had an operation and was off the field for six weeks.

“The only player we managed into this tournament was Siya Kolisi, but that was only because he was the captain and we felt it was hugely important to have him here and to give him every chance chance to get fit again. We had to do everything we could to make sure he’s here.”

HEYNEKE MADE THE SAME ERROR

Of course, Erasmus wouldn’t have just been referencing his own experience as technical adviser, because he was effectively involved with the Boks during the Heyneke Meyer reign as coach and as SARU’s manager of rugby. He didn’t have the power he has now as national director of rugby, but he would have been watching the 2015 World Cup with interest.

Even by the admission, some players who benefited from it will admit now that Meyer probably erred in placing too much of a premium on experience, too frequently over-emphasising it ahead of the need to have a full squad of players who were fit and available to play from the start of the tournament.

Jean de Villiers, the initial captain, was probably the most obvious case in point. De Villiers suffered a crippling injury in the last game of the 2014 international season and was ruled out for almost the entire 2015 season. He’d hardly played when he was selected, and in the game he had played for the Boks, in the loss to Argentina in Durban, his jaw was broken, thus ruling him out for longer.

He wasn’t the only one who went in carrying an injury, or was an injury doubt, and ironically the two other leadership figures, Fourie du Preez who took over the captaincy when De Villiers was injured against Samoa, and Victor Matfield were both carrying injuries at various stages of that World Cup.

In Du Preez’s case he went in not having played for several months. He played off the bench in the first game against Japan and was supposed to play off the bench in a few more games but resolved after that defeat that he wanted to be part of the solution and asked Meyer to start with him in the next game. Meyer did and then Du Preez ended up captaining the side from the third game against Scotland, after De Villiers had flown home.

Du Preez did a great job as captain and played a big role in helping the Boks recover from the disaster of the Japan defeat to coming within two points of beating the All Blacks in the semifinal. But the point is that the Boks did start off that tournament with too many players who weren’t 100 percent fit and it might have contributed to the upset defeat in Brighton.

NEED TO GET THE BALANCE RIGHT

“My experience of World Cups is that you need to make sure the balance between experience and having a fully fit squad is right," says Erasmus.

"Often the scale leans the wrong way and then you struggle to have a fit squad. I’m telling you that having only one or two guys missing training at the moment is a new experience for me when it comes to World Cup squads and it makes a big difference. It is important to have a fit squad with players on the field and not undergoing rehab all the time, and constantly challenging each other for starting places.”

Erasmus said that the potential loss of experience when it comes to prioritising fit and ready players over ones that might be experienced but required too much management could be overcome through clever coaching.

“Look you lose a little bit of big match temperament and ability to handle pressure situations. There’s no doubt that there are times when youngsters don’t handle those aspects as well as older, more experienced guys,” said the national director of rugby.

“But we can find ways to work around that in the team environment. So ja, I believe having a fit, agile, competitive, healthy squad is more important than having a great team on paper. Hopefully I am right.”

HISTORY IS THERE TO BE LEARNED FROM

Erasmus’ keen regard for history as something that you can learn from extends to his approach to what the Boks might need from a tactical perspective.

“I can only speak about previous World Cups when it comes to my expectations of what is required tactically from that perspective,” he says.

“Of course 1995 is a long time ago and rugby was totally different then to what it is now, but that World Cup was decided by a drop-goal. Then in 1999 we were knocked out by a drop-goal, the one from Stephen Larkham when we played Australia in the semifinal. But in 1995 discipline nearly cost us as the Boks had had a red card. Had we drawn the final, or the game in Durban against France been washed out, we would have been knocked out by a red card.

“So discipline is very important, and is something we have worked on. Going into the knock-outs we haven’t had any cards. Neither yellow nor red. That’s important and we need to keep it that way.

“Then in 2011, when I was involved, we struggled in the quarterfinal with a specific area of our ground. We struggled with David Pocock’s play at the breakdowns and we couldn’t get through to the referee what our problem with his approach was. We didn’t have the ability on the field to change that specific situation.

“We have learned from that and as a result of that experience we have been role playing by putting the guys in specific situations that they might be confronted with when it matters and seeing how they react to them.

“Obviously it didn’t work (in our opening Pool match) against New Zealand, but we’ve also taken our lessons from that game.”

BREAKING THE TREND

Yes, and regardless of what happens in the next three weeks Erasmus will be absorbing experiences that he can ensure will be applied when South Africa goes to France in 2023 for the next World Cup. In appointing Erasmus to be director until the end of the next four year cycle, South African rugby has for once broken the trend of throwing away all the ISP built up over four years by starting from scratch after a World Cup .

That it would be a long work in progress was one of the reasons SA Rugby took the unprecedented decision to contract Erasmus for six years. He may well employ a head coach to work under him, but Erasmus will still be the main man until 2023 and will be there to apply his learnings.