Ken Borland

The Lions’ victory over the Waratahs was a fantastic achievement and one of the best results in the history of our SuperRugby, you have to give credit to the players and the whole coaching staff for pulling off that sort of scoreline in Sydney – and for keeping the New South Welshmen pointless for the first time ever in the competition.

The Lions were really dominant in the scrums and lineouts and they scored some very clever tries. But I would like to single out defence coach Joey Mongalo as their unsung hero.

He took over from JP Ferreira and was under lots of pressure when they started to concede tries in the losses against the Blues, in Argentina and versus the Crusaders, so it is a real credit to him that they have tightened up so much since then. Swys de Bruin took a big punt in appointing his son, Neil, as the skills coach and then he took Joey out of the junior team, where he had been tremendously successful.

It’s a big step up for Mongalo but he can now enjoy the history made in Sydney. He has persevered through the ups and downs and been at the Lions for seven years and was promoted to the Currie Cup last year. He was also the SA U20 defence coach under Dawie Theron and in their last year they finished fourth at the junior world cup. Saru, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to make use of him last year, but he is a quality young coach.

The difference he has made to the Lions’ defence is that they now have great spacing, alignment and width, they really cover the width of the field. They are also very strong in the collisions, guys like Franco Mostert, Harold Vorster and Malcolm Marx really monster guys. They have a great double-hit system which means the ball-carrier can’t get the offload away.

They’ve also shown greater line-speed these last two weeks, they’re coming forward and really laying down the gauntlet to the opposition. With that they can force turnovers through Kwagga Smith and Marx, who is probably the best in the world right now at forcing turnovers. He gets over the ball so often and he is really hard to shift.

The fact that he comes off the lineout and is inside the ball a lot of the time allows him to be very effective at turnovers. The hooker role has changed over the last few years because of the nature of how teams contest for possession and one of the best at stealing ball I ever worked with was Bismarck du Plessis. The hooker nowadays basically defends the inside channel, which enables him to be close to his target.

The other impressive feature of the Lions’ play against the Waratahs was the quality of their kicking game and their lack of fear in doing it anywhere on the field. Elton Jantjies was even prepared to put in a crossfield kick off turnover ball five metres from the goal-line. There was also a great little chip from scrumhalf Dillon Smit in the middle of the field that bounced into Ruan Combrinck’s hands and Kwagga scored.

They have the courage to do it when it’s not expected and they execute those kicks so well. The Lions also have very good chasing wings.

Swys de Bruin obviously gives them the confidence to try anything anywhere on the field and you can never accuse him of taking the safe option. He’s also had his ups and downs as a coach – he spent a long time at the Sharks Academy before Johan Ackermann brought him back into the coaching fold. He brings confidence and a sense of adventure to Lions rugby.

One must also give credit to forwards coach Philip Lemmer. Those two tries from drives off the lineout were really well executed and the way they shifted and created a channel for Marnus Schoeman, ripping a wide open gap for him to go through, was very clever.

So it was almost the perfect performance away from home by the Lions, I expect them to back it up by beating the Reds this weekend, and it is a smart move by Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus to add Swys to the consulting team for the England series. Does it mean the Springboks will play with that same freedom as the Lions do?

Well Rassie is naturally quite a conservative coach so it will be interesting to see if Swys will free up the backs.

Elton Jantjies is now the most capped Lions player ever, having gone past Cobus Grobbelaar’s 94 appearances earlier this season, and he is hardly ever injured, so he is tremendously resilient and looks after his body well. The Lions’ style of play is tailor-made to his strengths and it was encouraging to see him dictate matters in an away game, having shown previously he’s obviously very good at altitude. A lot of it comes down to the backing Swys de Bruin gives him and the question is whether he will now get the same with the Springboks.

I thought the Bulls were good value for their win over the Rebels. Sometimes you have to win ugly but to bank the five points despite that was excellent and coach John Mitchell won’t mind doing that every week.

Adriaan Strauss is certainly in brilliant form, last year’s break did him good and he has dropped some weight. In fact, I have worked with Atta since the U21s and this is the fittest I have ever seen him. He has always been a world-class player, but in the environment Mitchell has created at Loftus Versfeld, he is really performing. Having him there really adds accuracy to the set-pieces and he almost always hits his jumpers with his dead-eye-dick throws.

That brings RG Snyman and Lood de Jager into play and that forms the axis of the Bulls side with flyhalf Handre Pollard.

Under the new regime, Lood is also fitter and more mobile and the offloads and supporting lines of the Bulls forwards are very good, they look to keep the ball alive in space. Their scrum also functioned quite well against the Rebels and they created a great angle on the crucial try scored by Divan Rossouw just before halftime. They took a whole lot of Rebels defenders out of the game, they could not get across in time and the visitors basically ran out of tacklers.

Pollard is also providing direction with the boot and is enjoying a good string of matches, plus you have the magic and game-breaking ability of Jesse Kriel and Warrick Gelant, who has such incredible feet, he could get his way out of a phone box full of tacklers!

In fact there are now a lot of players with good feet on display in South African rugby, there’s that stepping ability. New Zealand’s guys tend to rely on their size, but we’re starting to produce it on the wings, guys who are really quick with good feet and are good in the air, which is going to be crucial in the Rugby Championship and against England.

The Rebels’ tactics are well-known on the Highveld, trying to slow down or stop the game, which gives their forwards longer time to recover. Visiting teams to Pretoria either stack their bench with forwards in a 6/2 split, so for the last 20 minutes they almost have a fresh pack on, or they slow the game down, sit down often and make the whole pace slower.

But hopefully the Bulls will also be able to turn over the Highlanders on the Highveld this weekend.

The Sharks versus Stormers game was obviously between two teams desperate for a win and the loss puts real heaps of pressure now on the Stormers. They’ll have to win with bonus points in their next five games in the Cape, which is possible. But for the Stormers to win with bonus points they need to be far more defensively secure than they have been.

But I look forward to watching the games in my 11^th floor Tokyo flat, which overlooks the Springbok training facility for next year’s World Cup. I hope I am still here next year to look out my window and watch them train!

Urayasu City World Cup training facility – where the Springboks will be based while in Tokyo

John McFarland won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls as their defence coach. In all, he won 28 trophies during his 12 years at Loftus Versfeld.

He is currently the assistant coach of the Kubota Spears in Japan and 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.

As a player, Mark Boucher showed many times that he was a difficult man to rattle, a tenacious character who was at his best when his back was against the wall. But even he was shaken by the start to his coaching career.

Due to a prior commitment to play golf in the prestigious Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland, Boucher was not actually at SuperSport Park when the Titans began their competitive season with a four-day game against the Knights. It started well enough with the Titans securing a 113-run first-innings lead on the opening day.

Boucher was keeping a regular eye on proceedings via his mobile phone and was on the 14^th tee box at Carnoustie, rated one of the nastiest courses in the world with a particularly tough stretch of closing holes, when he checked the latest score on the second day of the Sunfoil Series match.

The Titans had been bowled out for 57, their lowest score ever, and Boucher had to phone a friend to check that the extraordinary collapse was, in fact, real.

“On 14, 15, 16 and 17, I hit all my tee shots out of bounds. But I guess it’s one of those things that happens in cricket; the other day the Bangalore Royal Challengers were bowled out for just 49 with Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers and Chris Gayle in their line-up.

“But it wasn’t great to see and I knew the only way the players would really get better is by being very honest about it. But we lost the next game as well, another poor performance, so we had to work really hard at practice and we won the next two games really well, both by an innings, and that was the turnaround,” Boucher told Saturday Citizen.

From the unpromising beginnings of that spluttering start, the Titans dominated the rest of the season. They only just failed to repair the damage of those first two Sunfoil Series losses, finishing only 1.78 points behind the Knights, but claimed the CSA T20 Challenge and Momentum One-Day Cup in convincing fashion.

Boucher modestly suggests he had luxury sedans to deal with in terms of the players at his disposal, but the way he has worked with cricketers from throughout the spectrum – seasoned former internationals, current Proteas, exciting youngsters who have pushed themselves to the brink of international cricket, and those journeymen who are the stalwarts of a team – as well as the media and administrators, has been highly impressive.

“The Titans always had a very successful set-up, the culture was very strong, and I always looked up to them as a player. They’ve had years of good discipline and a good team ethic.

“And they knew how to win. So it was just a case of trying to keep that culture and adding my knowledge. It would be difficult not to be successful with all that talent,” the 40-year-old said.

But he has handled the challenges of balancing a team with the Black players and keeping the left-out White players happy extremely well.

“I knew it would be a challenge, but I’ve enjoyed it. The emphasis has been on team, there are a lot of stars and great players here, but team is what makes it tick. A lot of players who would play every game with the other franchises have had to sit out and in the limited-overs finals Shaun von Berg and David Wiese had to miss out, which was really hard because they both had very good seasons. But they made good with the time they had,” Boucher said.

The nuggety wicketkeeper/batsman had an inspirational effect on his Proteas team-mates and it seems those qualities have transferred to his new career as a coach.

“Not every good player becomes a good coach but I have always enjoyed working with players. Mickey Arthur said I should go help the bowlers with their batting so they could stick around with me in the lower-order, and I spent a lot of time giving Paul Harris, Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn short balls from the bowling machine. They didn’t particularly like it, but it worked!

“So I think there is a bit of that mould in me, but I’m a completely different coach to how I was as a player. I don’t mind using harsh words, but I try to be fair. I had so many coaches in my playing days so my attitude is ‘what would I have liked as a player in this situation?’,” Boucher said.

Surprisingly, he finds the white-knuckle moments the hardest.

“My big challenge is dealing with pressure, it’s twice as bad as the coach because you can’t do anything about it out in the middle! So I have to look in the mirror and tell myself I need to calm down because the players can feed off that. I’m still a young coach and I’m still learning.”

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-gauteng/20170520/282497183600083

Despite a poor final year in charge of the Springboks, there is little doubt Heyneke Meyer remains a top-class coach and it is a symptom of a sick South African rugby system that the 49-year-old is without a full-time coaching job despite making it clear that he still wants to make a difference to the game in this country.

Meyer was back at Loftus Versfeld a couple of days ago to launch the Beachcomber World Club 10s, a unique tournament for professional teams in a social environment, that will be held in Mauritius next month, but there is no doubt he still harbours a burning desire to be involved in the cauldron of top quality rugby again judging by the passion with which he answered a range of questions on South African rugby.

Although a great admirer of New Zealand rugby and a personal friend of All Blacks coach Steve Hansen, Meyer makes a good point when he says a drive to play like the Kiwis do is a case of chasing the wind for South African rugby.

He reckons it will take us 10 years to catch up to their style of play, by which time their game will have evolved and they will still be 10 years ahead of South Africa. It is perhaps a symptom of our insecurity as a nation that we are always trying to copy other teams – in the early 2000s it was Australian rugby that was the flavour of the month.

Meyer, who has been working with plenty of New Zealanders and Fijians in his part-time role as coach of the Asia Pacific Dragons team, points to a higher innate skills level as one of the main reasons South Africans will find it very difficult to emulate the free-flowing, expansive style of the Kiwis.

“South Africans don’t have the same natural understanding of space that they do, but I truly believe any of our teams can still beat a New Zealand team, especially at home. But if we try and follow them then we’ll never be the best in the world. We have to rediscover what we stand for and play South African rugby – brilliant set-pieces, driving, strong defence. We must do what we’re good at and kick intelligently, not just kick the ball away,” Meyer said.

The national coach from 2012 to 2015 made the point that ex-Springbok coaches are practically driven out of the country and pointed to Eddie Jones travelling from Australia to South Africa and now to England as an example of the value of experience, even if it comes from losing a few games.

“Eddie lost eight games in a row with Australia and was fired, he then helped the Springboks and learnt a lot there. In fact England are now playing like the Boks used to – they have great set-pieces, a great defence and kicking game, they still score tries and they’re on a winning run. It would be 50/50 right now between them and the All Blacks.”

Many observers have pointed to the speed at which New Zealand teams play the game and Meyer said this difference was most marked towards the end of matches, due to the superior fitness of the Kiwis.

“The All Blacks have always been superior in terms of fitness. We have big, strong guys, but it’s harder to get them fit. New Zealand have smaller but more mobile players and they run you ragged in the last 10-15 minutes. Central contracting means Steve Hansen knows the fitness of all his players and whether they need to rest or work harder.

“But you can’t do major fitness work if your players are tired or injured and our guys going overseas makes it very difficult, I’m very concerned about all the guys in Japan because you can’t play for 12 months. Before the last World Cup, I did not see the players for eight months so I asked for fitness reports from the franchises and nobody sent them in.

“So when I got the players I knew we were in trouble and the guys were not fit for the first game against Japan. But the All Blacks get to rest for three months after SuperRugby, so they’re super-fit for the next year, but we’re playing Currie Cup or in Japan. It’s very difficult for the South African coaches,” Meyer said.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-gauteng/20170513/282578787965088

The Bulls started their overseas tour with a parlous 38-14 defeat at the hands of the Blues in Albany on Saturday, a loss and awful performance that’s going to cause questions to be asked about the team’s coaching and management.

The Bulls were level 7-7 at halftime, having already conceded seven penalties, made numerous handling errors and looked out-of-sync on attack, but that’s as good as it got for the tourists as the second half saw them totally disintegrate as the Blues added five more tries to earn a bonus point.

Replacement scrumhalf Rudy Paige was given a consolation try after the final hooter, having not grounded the ball but probably deserving a penalty try anyway, but the Bulls had been goners long before that.

The Bulls started brightly enough with a promising attack in the Blues’ 22, but referee Nic Berry ended it with a harsh obstruction call. The home side’s backline was gone in a flash, roaring up the left side of the field and some superb handling and offloads by fullback Michael Collins and wing Melani Nanai saw scrumhalf Augustine Pulu scooting over the line for the opening try, in the third minute.

The Bulls would be back on level terms after 17 minutes as they earned a ruck penalty, flyhalf Handre Pollard’s super kick set up a lineout in the corner and prop Lizo Gqoboka burrowed over for a try after the driving maul.

There would be further opportunities for the Bulls in the first half, but they were ponderous with turnover ball and their dire handling meant errors interrupted just about every attack after a few phases.

The second half would be the same story, only worse, as the Blues quickly seized control of the game.

An early attack by the Bulls came to nothing as nobody seemed to know who was meant to clean, be a pillar or play halfback at a ruck, and Pollard then missed a tackle on Collins, allowing a lovely offload to wing Matt Duffie, who went through a poor tackle by opposite number Jamba Ulengo to score the second try, also converted by flyhalf Piers Francis.

The most astonishing example of clueless play by the Bulls came in the 56^th minute. Lock Lood de Jager did well to steal the ball at a five-metre lineout, but at the resulting ruck, scrumhalf Piet van Zyl went to play pillar and replacement flank Jannes Kirsten cleared the ball, making the awful decision to feed a pod inside his own in-goal area. That conceded a five-metre scrum, from which Francis’s pinpoint kick-pass across the field was claimed by Duffie for his second try.

It didn’t even help the Bulls when Blues flank Jimmy Tupou was temporarily sent from the field for a neck roll. Pollard was replaced on the hour mark in what was apparently a scheduled change, but new flyhalf Tian Schoeman was unable to find touch from a scrum penalty the Bulls earned.

Soon thereafter, Ulengo burst out of defensive alignment like a crazed shopper going after Black Friday sales, and the Blues’ replacement flyhalf, Ihaia West, knifed through to score.

The Blues were 24-7 up and continued to boss the game as one was left with the nagging impression that the Bulls ran out of legs.

The home side were able to hang on to the ball through numerous phases because of their impressive handling skills, with outside centre Rieko Ioane making his presence felt with a couple of great runs, going from one side of the field to the other before replacement hooker Matt Moulds ended the attack by going over in the corner.

West had barely kicked the conversion for a 31-7 lead when he was bursting through the line again, with the Bulls defence far too narrow, creating acres of space out wide for Nanai to go roaring through for a dazzling try.

The Bulls did get the final points as they earned a free kick at a scrum under the poles and Paige, who should have come on earlier for a hesitant Van Zyl, went on his own to score their second try.

While most pundits expected the Bulls to lose, nobody expected such a dismal display from them and they have a lot of introspection ahead of them this week before facing the mighty Chiefs.

Scorers

Blues – Tries: Augustine Pulu, Matt Duffie (2), Ihaia West, Matt Moulds, Melani Nanai. Conversions: Piers Francis (2), West (2).

Bulls – Tries: Lizo Gqoboka, Rudy Paige. Conversions: Handre Pollard, Tian Schoeman.