Ken Borland

A new contracting model that stops certain unions from hogging all the talent as well as expanded South African participation in the Pro14 are both in the pipeline for SA Rugby, president Mark Alexander said on Wednesday.

The two initiatives are certainly linked as the success of South African teams playing in the Pro14 will depend on them performing well on the field, and there is little doubt the Southern Kings and Free State Cheetahs need to improve their depth to be competitive this year and beyond. Adding two more franchises to the mix will also put more of a premium on player resources.

“We are going to have more South African teams involved in the Pro14, possibly from 2020, we’re in negotiations about it and we are excited about it. We will then have four teams in the southern hemisphere and four in the north, which gives our players more opportunity. The Pro14 works financially for us, especially when we become full members in 2019/20.

“Griquas and Mpumalanga are now part of our franchise system and we are preparing them to play in Europe. We ignored the north for too long, it’s a very strong competition. Sanzaar is also a great competition for us, but the biggest problem is the distances you have to travel. Playing in the Pro14 helps with player welfare and being in the same time zone helps the broadcasters,” Alexander said at the tournament launch at SuperSport studios on Wednesday.

Alexander said that there had also been broad support for a new contracting model that limits the number of senior players each union can have on their books, as well as providing for a loan system that will help all the franchises.

“The new contracting system will allow for a draft. We cannot sustain a system with 990 professional players, but I believe we have enough players. But some franchises are sitting with six locks they have signed from Craven Week and a lot of them are sitting in the storeroom and not playing. They need to be playing instead of sitting around waiting for someone to get injured.

“The new player contracting model is vital in this regard, it will limit the number of players a union can sign to around 45-50 senior players, but there won’t be any pay limit in terms of budgets. This new model has come from the players’ association and it is a very good document. We have created a false market in this country and we need to be responsible because the first thing junior players do when they get signed is stop studying,” Alexander said.

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Everyone can see that the Springboks are not getting the results for the amount of effort they are putting in, but there is real pressure on them against France at the Stade de France. If they lose this weekend then that will be three defeats on the bounce which is not a good return.

Coach Rassie Erasmus will only have a 41% winning record if the Springboks lose to France, but we can see progress in their performances this year.

Last weekend against England was another Test that got away from Rassie and the Springboks though, who simply made too many mistakes.

In terms of Owen Farrell’s controversial last tackle, it was definitely, according to the laws, a clear penalty and yellow card. It was certainly a big shot, with the defender just trying to get his body in the way of the carrier, he made good shoulder contact but there were no arms involved. In fact, it is very hard to get the arms around when you are making that sort of tackle. The height as well was definitely penalisable.

The Springboks’ error-rate was particularly costly at lineout time and there were two main functions responsible for that – their alignment and the timing between the jumper and Malcolm Marx, who was having a technical issue with his throwing.

Having worked with Malcolm on his throwing between the ages of 18 and 21, plus being head-on with hookers throwing to the lollipop for 20 years, I can see exactly what went wrong. It’s like a golf swing and I can see if the shoulders, fingers or hips are wrong when he throws.

The Springboks used the middle pod a lot in their phase play, they play a 1-3-2-2, but after playing across the field you always eventually end up on the edge. Both teams tried to put the middle pod under pressure, but England did it better, making good reads with their defensive rush getting on top. The Springboks needed to play out the back more, while England did look to use their second line on attack and enjoyed a lot of success with that in the second half.

The Springboks were able to get tremendous field position in the first half through their scrum and maul, but the problem was, when you maul a lot, it means you get slow ball afterwards with forwards behind forwards latchers.

South Africa’s kicking game was good and with a few better bounces they would have had England under real pressure. They played two phases and kicked as they have done in their last six Tests, and found good space behind the England wingers. Scrumhalf Ivan van Zyl’s box-kicking was good, and it was a real war of the boot between him and Ben Youngs.

England regained the ball well though in the second half and they had the Springboks under pressure. In a gainline battle like last weekend’s Test, those aerial duels are crucial.

Damian de Allende found areas in which he was able to get outside the rush defence from behind the middle pod, he was able to find space, getting over the advantage line with good footwork, and he really gave the Springboks go-forward. Damian is now a regular in the team and he should consistently be putting in performances like that.

The Springboks used Warren Whiteley more in the wide channels, on the edge of the attack a lot, and Duane Vermeulen was under a lot of high balls, so they were a good loose-forward combination.

It was a very tactical game at Twickenham, with a lot of mauls, but England just had a bit more fluidity. The one real positive for the Springboks was the scrummaging, they absolutely destroyed England and got two tightheads, which is quite something at that level. The one crucial scrum penalty against them at the end was a 50/50 call though.

I’m really looking forward to this weekend’s game, I’ve gained a great respect for French rugby over the last four months. It’s going to be a big midfield battle against the two powerhouse French centres, Gael Fickou and Mathieu Basteraud. Flyhalf Camille Lopez is a great tactician and has a good kicking game, and plays flat on the gainline.

And the French forward pack is never poor.

Sbu Nkosi and Aphiwe Dyantyi were very good for the Springboks against England, but I’m looking forward to Willie le Roux and Faf de Klerk adding a bit more spark.

Stade Francais assistant coach John McFarland was the Springbok defence coach from 2012 through to the 2015 World Cup, where they conceded the least line-breaks in the tournament and an average of just one try per game. From 2001 to 2012 he won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls. McFarland enjoyed three years with the Kubota Spears in Tokyo from 2016-18.

The Springboks’ game against England at Twickenham on Saturday is something to look forward to, but it will be played in very different conditions to the World Cup in Japan in September.

Next year’s showpiece tournament will be played on super-fast, hard fields and the weather will be hot. In England at this time of year, the fields are very different and it’s cold, with the Springboks coming from temperatures of 30 degrees to just six or seven degrees.

There has been some consistency in coach Rassie Erasmus’s selection: There has to be 10 Tests into his tenure, that’s what you would expect. There are a few youngsters he is going to have a look at but there are also one or two surprises in his squad.

The selection of Schalk Brits as the third hooker is intriguing. He is a 37-year-old who has started just one of his 11 Tests. It’s ironic that Schalk is mentoring Malcolm Marx who has more Test caps than he has. Some people have drawn parallels to when Heyneke Meyer recalled Victor Matfield, but the lock had played 110 Tests when he was recalled in June 2014, and he had played a full season of SuperRugby.

Gio Aplon has also been recalled at the age of 36 and also from semi-retirement, playing in Japan’s top league, which is a mix of corporate workers and professional rugby players. Gio obviously has talent and good feet, but he’s going to find Test rugby a whole different pace and the intensity of the collisions will be far greater, everything will just happen much quicker.

Amongst the other players brought in, JD Schickerling is probably the next lock in, while Lood de Jager is fresh and a proven international performer. With the injuries to Lukhanyo Am and Lionel Mapoe, Ruhan Nel is also next in line for the number 13 jersey and the Springboks management called him into the squad earlier this year as well.

I am surprised none of the Du Preez brothers were chosen.

Jean-Luc is so physical and has such a big impact on the gain-line, while Daniel was selected earlier this year. Robert has now won successive Currie Cups with different teams and has proven game-management ability. The fact that Damian Willemse was not picked at flyhalf by Western Province for such a big game as the Currie Cup final tells you something about his game-management. But at least Robert gets to go to Sale now and it will be good for him to play with Faf de Klerk.

The Springboks’ contracted and Japan-based players should be fresh. They will all be ready to go, and it is a shame that the England game is outside the international window, so South Africa won’t be able to field their strongest side.

These Autumn internationals are going to sort England out after their six-match losing run earlier this year. They play the Springboks, Australia and New Zealand in the next few weeks and then we will really be able to see where they are heading into World Cup year.

The big thing for the Springboks is that they won’t have the safety net of playing on the Highveld, and John Mitchell, England’s new defence coach, knows the South African players well and would have been part of the coaching structures while he was with the Bulls. He and Jacques Nienaber would have had meetings about the blueprints for defence and the breakdown. He will intimately know the Bok defensive system.

Mitchell will implement a very high press and rush line-speed in the English defence; it’s a very high-risk system and the Bulls struggled to master it. Their defensive record was 14^th in SuperRugby, after having a full Currie Cup as well to implement the system.

It’s ironic that Mitchell ended the SuperRugby campaign saying he was looking for a specialist defence coach because of this defensive record, and now he’s the defence coach of a top-four international team.

England gave the Springboks real problems out wide in June, because the South Africans were far too tight in defence. But what cost the English at the end of the day was staying on the coast, they were in that death zone in the last 10 minutes of the first half and the last 20 of the second half in the first two Tests in Johannesburg and Bloemfontein. Duane Vermeulen was very destructive at the breakdown at the back end of both halves because England couldn’t get their cleaners to the breakdown.

England coped very well in the wet at Cape Town in terms of fielding the Springbok high-ball, box-kick strategy, using Mike Brown as the principal catcher, who has now been dropped. It shows that four months is a very short time in international rugby.

I believe the Springboks will again launch, then pass to a second runner forward, and then choose to kick left or right and put the ball behind England, which makes it very difficult for the fullback to defend. It’s a conservative strategy but it puts pressure on the opposition and the tactic had success against New Zealand in the two games this year.

The Springboks will want to play two phases and then kick behind, this is a really good tactic against a high line and a press defence because there is always space at the back because the wings are up. It will be a test though for the two young scrumhalves on tour, can they execute this strategy?

Plus there’s no Willie le Roux for this weekend, which is maybe why Aplon is there, in fact that is the most probable explanation for his selection. Rassie will want to turn England and make them exit, bringing into play the massive Springbok lineout which will have four excellent jumpers. So he needs a right and left-footed combination at flyhalf and fullback and height to compete on the England lineout.

The key for the Springboks will be the box-kick, because they maul so much, and Erasmus learnt during his time with Munster how important a kicking game from scrumhalf is, and De Klerk has done really well this year in that regard. England will be preparing for a barrage of box-kicks after the maul.

The Northern Hemisphere tour is always exciting for the players because they get to play in those places up north only once a year. They also don’t train much because there’s no way you can improve their fitness at this late stage of the year, and the preparation is just about getting the organisation and strategy right, and making sure they are mentally fresh for Saturday.

John McFarland is the assistant coach at Stade Francais, having been the Springbok defence coach from 2012 through to the 2015 World Cup, where they conceded the least line-breaks in the tournament and an average of just one try per game. From 2001 to 2012 he won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls. McFarland enjoyed three years with the Kubota Spears in Tokyo from 2016-18.

One has to admire the Lions Rugby Union for the way they have been able to dig their way out of the abyss of financial ruin that faced them when they were relegated from SuperRugby in 2013. Just five years later and they are unquestionably South Africa’s premier franchise, the one most young players probably want to play for and producing a very popular brand of rugby.

But amidst all this success and SuperRugby trailblazing, there have also been messages coming out of Ellis Park that paint a picture of a franchise that is still anchored in the past in many ways and does not seem able to be the standardbearer of a future game all rugby fans should be hoping becomes truly the sport of all South Africans.

As much as the Lions deserve huge credit, one has to call them out for some of the mixed messages that they have sent out recently; as we have seen after another week of anguish caused by awful social media messages, perceptions are vital when it comes to inclusivity.

With Swys de Bruin jetting off overseas with the Springboks, the Golden Lions needed a new head coach for their Currie Cup campaign. But instead of heading for the safety of port and elevating one of the assistant coaches in Philip Lemmer or Joey Mongalo, or even promoting Bafana Nhleko, who has coached the SuperSport Rugby Challenge team as well as the Lions U19s and U21s and been an assistant with the Junior Springboks, they chose strength and conditioning coach Ivan van Rooyen.

Now Van Rooyen has undoubtedly played a very important part in the Lions’ success over the last few years, but his helicoptering into the head coaching job was inevitably attacked as being anti-transformation in certain quarters.

At this delicate stage in our country’s history, organisations really need to be sensitive about how their actions will be perceived by the majority. I am not saying it was wrong to appoint Van Rooyen, who played for the Lions at junior provincial level, and has gained some insights from Rob Walter, the former Proteas strength and conditioning guru who then became head coach at the Titans cricket team and enjoyed great success.

But the reasons for Van Rooyen’s appointment were never fully explained and even more shade is thrown at the Ellis Park hierarchy when Van Rooyen himself says he won’t be doing any actual coaching but is in more of a managerial role.

Why was this not explained properly on the day of his appointment, thus avoiding plenty of bad publicity?

The prospect of getting involved in rugby in Gauteng for a young Black player or coach is daunting enough without considerable barriers being put in their way, like the recent acquittal of Roodepoort U21 players on charges of racism during their April match against Wanderers.

While acknowledging that Sanele Ngcobo of Wanderers was “an honest and truthful witness” who testified that racial slurs had been made, the Golden Lions Rugby Union disciplinary tribunal ruled that because he could not prove who had specifically spoken the words, a not guilty verdict was appropriate.

For the physical abuse that degenerated into a mass brawl at the end of the game, one Roodepoort player was effectively handed a one-match ban! Talk about a slap on the wrist … and another slap in the face for Black rugby players.

To add insult to injury, when Wanderers were on their way to Roodepoort to play a later fixture, their bus broke down and they missed the game. The GLRU docked them five points, meaning Roodepoort now qualify for the Gold Cup instead of them!

Having reinvented themselves so spectacularly on the field, the Lions rugby union now really need to focus on the message they are sending out to their future market.

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