SOMETIMES CONTEXT BRINGS A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
The day before the massive downer for South Africans that was the first ever Springbok defeat to Argentina in 2015, I bumped into the national coach Heyneke Meyer walking the Umhlanga Rocks promenade.
After the usual salutations, Heyneke asked me a question: “What do you think will happen tomorrow?”
When roles are reversed, and it is the coach who is asking the journalist the question, it is sometimes hard to be completely honest.
“I think the Pumas will thrash the Boks, the selection is rubbish, and they don’t have much of a coach,” as an answer might make the atmosphere fractious.
Not that it was what I thought. I genuinely did believe what I told Heyneke: “I think you guys should win comfortably.”
Instead it was the Los Pumas who won with a degree of comfort on a bleak day for Bok rugby that was to be surpassed two months later by the loss to Japan and then, at the same Kings Park Stadium a year after that, the 57-15 defeat to the All Blacks under Meyer’s successor as Bok coach, Allister Coetzee.
Those weren’t the best days for South African rugby and since Rassie Erasmus took over in 2018 and players who were still wet behind the ears back then grew in experience, the landscape has changed.
And yet I was one of the few South Africans sitting at Kings Park that afternoon who did not throw the baby out of the bathwater with my reaction afterwards. While everyone else seemed to be all gloom and doom, and a fellow media person attacked me on Twitter for not going with the narrative that “the Boks should never lose to Argentina”, my reaction was more sober.
It was because of what Heyneke had told me in that conversation on the Umhlanga beachfront 36 hours later - “I don’t think we will win comfortably because I have driven the players hard physically this week so we could well be a bit flat.”
The Boks were flat and then some as the Pumas built a big early lead, and it was completely explainable.
The World Cup in England was just a matter of weeks away, Meyer had to take the long view, and he’d focussed that week not on preparing specifically for Argentina, but on getting in some physical conditioning ahead of the main event the following month.
FOCUSING ON NOW IS WHY HOSTS SHOULD WIN
One of the reasons South Africans should be confident that the Boks can put a bit of a recent Kings Park bogey behind them is that this time they won’t be getting ahead of themselves. And there definitely won’t be any complacency.
Argentina have been competitive for some time but seldom have they looked as formidable as they have this season. It started of course with their win over the British and Irish Lions in Dublin and then, after showing rust against the All Blacks in the first game because their top team didn’t play the series against England, they came good in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship.
Their first ever win over New Zealand on Argentina soil should have been followed by a win over Australia. They were unlucky to lose several minutes after the hooter in that first game. And like the All Blacks when they lost to the Pumas, the narrow margin of victory last week in Sydney didn’t do justice to the superiority of their overall performance.
So the Pumas come to South Africa this time as a rated entity, a team that has developed remarkably under the coaching of Felipe Contepomi, and let’s not forget it was just a year ago that they inflicted what was only the second defeat of the 2024 international season on the Boks.
The attitude coming out of the Bok camp this week is not one that suggests they are looking too far ahead. Instead there is an intense focus on now, on beating Argentina, and then moving on to the next challenge, which is winning against the same opponents in London the following week.
Regardless of what happens now winning the Championship will require a two week job from the Boks, not just one, and in that sense it is a good dry run for players in Saturday’s team who might be involved in the sequence of knock-out games that will require winning at the 2027 World Cup.
The Boks are going out to perfect the rough edges that were even evident in the 43-10 win over the All Blacks in Wellington and my money says that if they do that no team in the world, outside of maybe France, will be able to touch them. If it sounds like there is a caveat there, a bit of fence sitting in the sense that it is a qualified confidence, but there really isn’t. I’d be very surprised if the Boks didn’t win, and by more than a score.
DEPTH THAT HAS BEEN CREATED HAS EASED SELECTION
The conditioning programme the players were on that coincided with the week of the 2015 test in Durban was not the only reason they were well short of their best that day. Meyer also got his selection wrong.
Jean de Villiers was one of my favourite players, if not THE favourite player, when he was in his pomp. His reading of the game, both offensively and defensively, was second to none, and his defensive reads might account for the intercept tries he scored for both the Boks and the Stormers.
But when he was selected to play his comeback international from a long injury layoff in that Durban game he wasn’t ready. From memory, he played just a club game or a half in a low key provincial game since he had been injured in the final match of the 2014 season in Wales, so it wasn’t surprising that it was a day where looked like he wasn’t at the races.
It also happened to coincide with a day where Heyneke was experimenting a bit. I always thought Jesse Kriel would make a good wing but maybe the same game that the captain was returning to the team wasn’t the time to try it.
Selection has become easier for Rassie Erasmus than it was for his predecessors primarily because of the depth he has managed to create. As a believer in continuity I was pleased to see effectively the core of the same team that won in Wellington retained for Durban, but if Rassie had rung changes there wouldn’t have been any complaints either.
1980 JAGUARS WERE FIRST ARGENTINA TASTE OF KINGS PARK
That 2015 game wasn’t the first time a team of primarily Argentina players beat the Springboks in South Africa. It happened in 1982, in one of the biggest upsets of that era, when Hugo Porta’s team won in Bloemfontein a week after being thrashed in Pretoria.
But because their government wouldn’t allow it, the Pumas paraded as a South American composite team in those days - the Jaguars.
The first test match I ever watched live was the Boks/Jaguars game at Kings Park. Well, you won’t see the record books recognise the Jaguars team that came here in 1980 to play two games against Morne du Plessis’ team. They were officially a South America team, but the side was made up entirely of Pumas.
I had been at Natal’s game against the All Blacks in 1976, but that May afternoon 45 years ago I got to see Bok players wearing the jersey in the flesh for the first time. It was from the vantage point of the scholar seating that used to be in place at field level around the perimetre of the playing paddock.
The game was played as part of the buildup to the British Lions series of that year, with the Boks having been out of international rugby for the three years that had passed since they thrashed a World XV 45-24 in a game played to celebrate the opening of a new stand at Loftus in 1977.
That was the only time Robbie Blair wore the Bok No10 and he was brilliant, but let’s stop the digression and get back to what happened three years later.
Looking back, it wasn’t a particularly good game, and although the Boks won 24-9 to follow up an 18-9 win at the Wanderers (yes, the Wanderers as Ellis Park was being rebuilt) the week before, it felt like the alarm bells were ringing ahead of the arrival of the Lions. Remember the Lions had won 3-0 in SA under the captaincy of Willie John McBride on their previous tour in 1974, so there was a lot of pressure on the locals to win.
From memory the Boks scored just one try in that game, with skipper Du Plessis dotting down off a pushover try, which was seen as payback for what was an unedifying sight for South African eyes the week before - the Jaguars scored a pushover try at the Wanderers.
Pierre Edwards was the Bok fullback but got replaced, probably in those days because of injury, and a better attacking showing from the Boks later in the game - from memory De Wet Ras, usually a flyhalf, came on at centre - paved the way for the more attacking No15 Gysie Pienaar to be selected to face the Lions. And it proved a masterstroke, with Pienaar being the Bok star in the opening two test wins in Cape Town and Bloemfontein.
CURRIE CUP FINAL WAS A COMPELLING WATCH
I never thought the day would arrive where I delayed watching a Currie Cup final because I wanted to finish watching an English Premier League soccer match, but it happened last week.
My colleague Brenden Nel was there to write about the game so when the Merseyside derby was still undecided deep in the second half, I remained on the soccer channel and only switched over to the Emirates Airlines Park game 23 minutes in.
The immediate impression was that I wasn’t alone in downgrading the domestic final, because the stadium was very sparsely populated in comparison with the days of yore. The 1992 final, won narrowly by Natal against Transvaal, was one of the most atmospheric games I have ever been at, it was a test like atmosphere.
So I can completely understand the attitude of some of the former players who won Currie Cups when it was really meaningful. One ex-Bok told me he felt it was an insult to all those who like himself had won the Cup when finals were like test matches that they still call it the Currie Cup, and agreed with my line that the modern development competition, which is what it, should be named after the sponsor - like the Vodacom Cup was.
Yet the game itself, and I have caught up on the missed 23 minutes subsequently, was a riveting watch, with Griquas winning it with a dramatic penalty after the hooter from George Whitehead. Those who read my preview to the game will know the result pleased me, because with a smaller union winning it there is a better narrative than a URC aligned union fielding a URC strength team winning it.
It was the first Griquas win since 1970, thus it was an historic moment in the competition, and something we may refer back to in the years to come. With respect to the Lions, that would not have been the case had they won - it was a URC team against a Currie Cup team. They should have been expected to win.
Considering they are now battle hardened, they should be expected to win their opening URC game in Cardiff on Saturday night too - but it is later in the season that the Lions might end up paying for their decision to eschew the conventional low key pre-season buildup to play tough finals rugby instead.
IT SHOULD JUST BE PLAYED IN A DIFFERENT WINDOW
The way Griquas turned around the big defeat they had suffered in their final Currie Cup league game a fortnight prior to the decider got me thinking. When the Sharks, Bulls and Western Province all joined the Lions in going into URC mode, the chasm between them and the smaller unions became obvious.
Or that was what I thought at the time. But maybe what was really required from the smaller unions was just a taste of playing against URC players so that they could make the adjustment. There wasn’t any gap between Griquas and the Lions in the final, and few would argue that the Griquas win was undeserved.
With further exposure to better quality opposition from the bigger unions would the standard of play of the smaller unions not also improve, just like it did for Griquas in the space of 14 days?
It can’t happen unfortunately when the Currie Cup is played in its current off-season window. Several players about to be launched into URC action this coming weekend have spoken about the benefits of having a better off-season break this time compared to last year, when too many URC players were still committed to the Currie Cup.
The unions aligned to the URC can’t afford to play their top players in the Currie Cup in what should be the off-season, with the Lions being the odd one out although even they played fewer URC players in the domestic competition this time around. And yet all of them would probably agree that the Currie Cup has its place, but should be played parallel to the URC and the European competitions.
If that was the case, then the fringe players would get what they need, which is game time during the season, thus enabling them to stay sharp for a possible URC callup. And it would mean that the teams playing in the Currie Cup would be the next best teams, or thereabouts, that the unions in question, could put onto the field.
That’s not the case currently. WP had to raid club and Blitzbok resources just to put out a team in the competition this season, and their side was a long way short of what it would look like if it was played in season and not when the wider squad is committed to resting and then rejuvenating before starting preparations for the URC.
In a conversation with Sharks XV coach JP Pietersen he told me that while such decisions were above his pay grade, he would play the Currie Cup parallel to the URC for several reasons - one of them being that seven games isn’t enough for young players who need the competition as a development tool to properly bed themselves in.
In his view there should be 12 games minimum for players who use the Currie Cup to make the graduation from junior rugby to senior rugby. If the competition was spread out over the proper season, meaning not constrained into what should be the offseason, it would offer so much more.
IT DOES HAVE ITS PLACE
While I would agree with those who say it shouldn’t be referred to the Currie Cup anymore, a high-quality domestic competition is needed to help age-group players to bridge the gap between age-group rugby and senior rugby. Which is another reason a competition running parallel to the URC, thus letting more experienced second stringers play in it, makes sense.
The youngsters won’t be getting as much from the experience if their opponents are all the same age, which is why the proposals to maybe morph it into an under-23 competition next year requires some thought before being applied. For unless a healthy number of more experienced players are permitted in each team, an under-23 competition would be another age-group competition rather than the required step up to senior level.