Ken Borland

Marco van Staden may be on his way to Leicester Tigers in July and is apparently not currently on the Springboks’ radar, but Bulls coach Jake White on Friday backed the loose forward’s credentials for the series against the British and Irish Lions.

And he is expecting the 25-year-old to push his case even more on Saturday as an all-Springbok Bulls loose trio takes on the in-form Sharks back row that includes Springbok skipper Siya Kolisi.

White on Friday restored the experienced Arno Botha, the scorer of two tries in the Currie Cup final against the Sharks, to his starting line-up and Van Staden, Botha and Duane Vermeulen versus Kolisi, Henco Venter and Sikhumbuzo Notshe will be a fascinating match-up.

“I’m not in the inner sanctum of the Springboks so I don’t know what they think and I know from being there before that they will have their own plan and players in mind for that. But it would seem highly unlikely that Marco is in their plans because he hasn’t been in the alignment camps. But he’s certainly not negative and he has been great for us.

“Marco is playing really good rugby and even though he’s leaving in July, we’re trying to get as much out of him as we can. He said he didn’t want to leave early, he wanted to finish his contract properly and so all three of our back row on Saturday are Springboks and it’s a great chance against Kolisi and Notshe for them to put their hands up,” White said on Friday.

Van Staden was particularly impressive last weekend against the Stormers, making 22 tackles and being his usual nuisance at the breakdowns.

The selection of Botha means Elrigh Louw, one of the brightest young playing talents at Loftus Versfeld, will be playing off the bench against the Sharks, alongside the likes of Springboks Lizo Gqoboka and Trevor Nyakane. The Bulls will undoubtedly be wanting to take the intensity up a notch in the final quarter.

While White is a big fan of the attributes of the 21-year-old Louw, and is merely giving him “a breather” after putting in two back-to-back 80-minute shifts, the coach also revealed that another player he has the highest hopes for, the 20-year-old front-ranker Jan-Hendrik Wessels, will be hooker this weekend for the Pretoria Rugby Club side, in a change of position for the former Grey College star who has played both loosehead and tighthead prop for the Bulls senior side.

“He’s a good rugby player who can do it all, he played lock for Grey in Standard 9 and then moved to prop in matric. He’s like John Smit, who I always knew would make it, but you want it to happen quicker because he could play 100 Tests. My patience is not running out with him, but he needs to be part of our team in the next six months and I’m trying to find a spot for him,” White said.

One never needs to blackmail players to go and tour the beautiful Caribbean, but the Proteas’ heads may have just dropped a bit when the schedule for their series in the West Indies starting next month was released on Friday and it revealed that both Test matches will be played on the island of St Lucia.

The tour starts with the two Tests from June 10-14 and June 18-22, and they will both be hosted by the Daren Sammy Cricket Ground at Gros Islet on St Lucia, a venue where South Africa have never managed to win a cricket match.

It was the venue of their infamous 2007 World Cup semi-final when “Brave Cricket” saw them crash to 27 for five against Australia, who cruised to victory by seven wickets with 111 deliveries to spare.

Their other two games at the then Beausejour Stadium in the hilly north-east of the beautiful tropical island were in the 2010 T20 World Cup when the Proteas lost to both India and Pakistan.

They have never played a Test there but the last five-day game at Gros Islet saw a good cricket pitch on which England beat the West Indies by 232 runs, both fast bowlers and spinners doing well as Mark Wood was man of the match with figures of six for 93 and Moeen Ali took seven for 135. The tourists scored 361 for five declared in their second innings.

Contrary to expectations emanating from the Caribbean that Trinidad would be South Africa’s main base for the tour, Grenada will then host the five T20 Internationals between June 26 and July 3 at the National Cricket Stadium at St George’s. The Proteas’ record there is better, winning all three of their ODIs against the West Indies, but being beaten by New Zealand during the 2007 World Cup on a pitch that made batting very difficult with plenty of assistance for the bowlers.

CSA director of cricket Graeme Smith said the change from the big island of Trinidad, that is closer to the South American mainland, to St Lucia and Grenada was for safety reasons in these times of Covid.

“We have been working with the West Indies cricket board weekly and they decided to go to islands that are safer because of Covid, St Lucia and Grenada have had less cases than other venues,” Smith told Saturday Citizen.

South Africa have not played a Test in the West Indies since June 2010, when Smith himself captained them to a 2-0 series win.

South Africa tour to West Indies fixtures:

Bulls coach Jake White said on Friday that he is hopeful that the Captain’s Challenge will be used to reverse obvious mistakes in referee’s decisions and not as a “tactical weapon” in this weekend’s Rainbow Cup matches that see the Sharks travel to Pretoria to take on the Currie Cup champions.

The new law trial gives teams one review each to look at either an incident in the build-up to a try or suspected foul play. A successful challenge means the review is retained, but last weekend the Bulls’ match against the Stormers was regularly interrupted by referrals, which almost seemed to have become tit-for-tat between the two teams after Steven Kitshoff used it against his Bulls counterpart Duane Vermeulen in the opening minutes.

“I think the reviews have not been properly thought out and they probably could be used as a tactical weapon. But the feedback I’ve received from Mark Lawrence [SA Rugby referees head] and SA Rugby is that from now on unless the officials are 100% sure watching the replay in real time then they won’t go back on their decision. We can’t go back and look at every single breakdown because you’ll always find something on slow-mo.

“So I think common sense is coming out now. It took two hours, six minutes for our match against the Stormers to finish and apparently 63 minutes were lost across all the Rainbow Cup matches in the northern and southern hemisphere last weekend because of all the stoppages. That’s one hour of non-activity. We still need to make sure we stamp out head injuries, but some balance is important,” White said on Friday.

The Bulls coach said he was particularly looking forward to the Sharks as adversaries this weekend because they are rated so highly as a team to beat.

“The Sharks are obviously a good side and they have not made many changes, consistency is what they’re going for. They have 10 points from two games and it’s just like when I arrived at Loftus last year – the Sharks were top of the pops from Super Rugby and everyone said they were the team to beat. It’s exactly the same now, they’re a good side and I look forward to playing them again.

“It will be like the Currie Cup final again in the sense that we must win because they have a two-point headstart on us with those two bonus points. Our penalty count is a concern, but then I see that the Sharks have also given away an extraordinary amount of penalties, so it’s obviously just the way the game is being refereed at the moment. But we have the best referee [Jaco Peyper] in South Africa this weekend,” White said.

There has been much talk lately as regards the prospects of the world champion Springboks as they return to action in July, but we should probably ignore the extreme views of certain bitter New Zealanders who have denigrated South African rugby and also those of local journalists who have arrogantly predicted a 3-0 whitewash of the British and Irish Lions.

The familiar Bok-bashing from the Antipodes made many people in South Africa very angry, especially the suggestion that the Springboks won the World Cup due to a “helpful schedule”. I don’t remember too many people from New Zealand thinking anyone but England were going to win the final, especially after they battered the All Blacks in the semis, so it’s difficult to understand how that was an “easy” path to the trophy for Siya Kolisi’s team.

The article also churlishly wrote off South Africa’s 2019 Rugby Championship win and, perhaps most disgustingly, accused South African rugby of cowardice for not playing in the tournament last year. Author Ben Smith is normally someone whose articles I enjoy, but to just ignore the horrors of the Covid-19 pandemic and the many thousands who lost their lives, never mind the effect on the economy, was just plain ugly. Our country suffered through one of the hardest lockdowns on the planet and playing rugby would have been thoroughly irresponsible at that time. It would have been idiotic for our players to try and take on Aussies and Kiwis who had enjoyed a few months of rugby already.

The good thing about the tripe that was published though was that it provided one of the most classic take-downs on social media because director of rugby Rassie Erasmus actually replied to Smith. His response was “This always made sense to me: A lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinion of a sheep.”

That was so good that it really deserved a mic drop or a “Regards, Rassie” at the end.

One can understand the bitterness of some All Blacks supporters because they play with such elan and confidence but that does not make them the best team in the world. The Springboks have chosen substance over style and they have the World Cup and the No.1 ranking to show that they are currently the team to beat.

Smith is correct though when he says talk of a Springbok whitewash should be quelled and we should be happy with just winning the series. England and semifinalists Wales showed at the World Cup that they are powerhouses of the game, while New Zealand and Australia have certainly declined, and now the British and Irish teams are sending their best of the best.

While I have no doubt that the crafty Erasmus and head coach Jacques Nienaber will have honed the Springbok team in the training camps and two Tests against Georgia in the build-up, they will still have to adapt to that step-up in intensity that Test rugby provides, especially when it’s a bunch of manic British and Irish Lions who are the opposition.

I have no doubt it’s going to be a hotly contested series, both teams are going to have to work very hard for any advantage and a 3-0 result either way is extremely unlikely. Which is the way it should be.

There is a certain mythology that grows around Lions tours and the strategic battle between Warren Gatland and Erasmus/Nienaber is going to be fascinating. Reports from the UK suggest Gatland has identified a brutal physical battle as the most important factor, but I fancy the Springboks will be a bit sneakier than to just rely on their brawn.