Ken Borland

The success of the alignment camps and the likelihood that there will not be any Covid bubbles to negotiate means Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber is in no rush to name his squad for the incoming series against Wales in July and will wait until the URC plays itself out.

Nienaber, speaking at SA Rugby’s announcement of a three-year initiative with Betway called Next Phase, which will develop the women’s game through growing coaching capacity, said his squad has not even been chosen yet. Wales announced their touring group on May 18.

“I’ll announce the squad only after the players have completed their commitments with their franchises,” Nienaber said in Rosebank on Thursday. “They don’t need to hear from the national coach now, just their franchise coaches.

“We haven’t yet had our selection meeting, although there is a certain group that we are looking at. We know who we’re looking at, we’ve had alignment camps, but we’ll let the teams play their URC playoffs first.

“The Welsh teams are already all out of the URC, so Wales can already be in camp, but it’s going to be more staggered for us, with players joining us as their teams fall out. The overseas players are in the same position.

“Last year it was very tough to plan, almost impossible, you’d have 10 different scenarios and see what pans out. This year looks like normal and hopefully there won’t be any bubbles to contend with,” Nienaber said.

While only a handful of players from the UK tour last November will be nervous about the beul’s axe hanging over their heads, Nienaber said he was heartened by the performances of the South African teams in the United Rugby Championship.

“I was encouraged by all four teams, all of them have played excellent rugby. Even the Lions did well with their comeback, they had a great winning streak here.”

Nienaber, who helped out with the coaching of the Springbok women’s team in 2014/15, said Next Phase came from an epiphany that their approach was wrong back then.

“Women’s rugby is on another development level and we probably made a mistake trying to foist a men’s programme on them back in 2014/15. The basics are not necessarily there with the girls because they start playing so late.

“You need to build the basics and then put the next layer in, which is adding the creative plans. I became a better coach through my involvement with them,” Nienaber said.

Paul Adams’ refusal to testify in Mark Boucher’s disciplinary hearing is an unfortunate development that will not only considerably weaken Cricket South Africa’s case, but also reflects badly on the former spin bowler and makes it harder for the current Proteas coach to clear his name in an unambiguous fashion.

Having showed an admirable level of courage in testifying at the Social Justice and Nation-Building hearings about an offensive team song the Proteas used in fines meetings in the late 1990s, Adams now seems to have lost his nerve when it comes to presenting and justifying the same evidence, but this time with Boucher’s representatives being able to cross-examine and test his claims.

It shows again that for SJN Ombudsman Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza to err so badly in allowing inflammatory allegations to be publicly aired without being properly subjected to legal processes has only created more headaches for Cricket South Africa.

Adams was also disingenuous in his weekend statement announcing his decision when he claimed he never meant to single out Boucher in his SJN testimony. While Boucher’s name was admittedly brought into the conversation by one of Ntsebeza’s legal assistants, Adams went on to say that Boucher “should come and say sorry, if that’s enough, but we can’t brush this under the carpet”.

Adams also went on to target Boucher’s appointment as Titans coach in 2016.

No amount of “sorry”s can fully cleanse the stain of being unjustifiably called a racist and Adams’ refusal to further discuss his allegations has denied Boucher the chance of properly exonerating himself if he is innocent of the offences his former team-mate accuses him of doing.

With Enoch Nkwe also not expected to testify, CSA’s entire case could quickly disintegrate. But the public may not be as quick to forget the allegations that were made against Boucher but which have never actually been disproven.

That could only have happened if Adams had availed himself to answer such probing questions as what other songs were sung, what songs did he participate in and who actually wrote the offensive lyrics?

Having provided the matches to those who are looking to burn down Boucher’s career, Adams has now slipped out of being held accountable for what he said.

Flyhalf Lionel Cronje made his name in the Eastern Cape with his ability to produce some magical trick plays, but Sharks coach Sean Everitt said on Thursday that the visitors will not be looking to deck out their game with any embellishments when they take on the Bulls in the Currie Cup final on Saturday.

Everitt’s comments mean the Sharks have been sending mixed messages this week, with captain Phepsi Buthelezi earlier saying that they wanted to play “their brand of rugby” and “move the Bulls around”.

But the coach who has risen through all the structures at Kings Park toned down the views of his enthusiastic eighthman.

“A Currie Cup final is not time to be experimenting with manoeuvres. Lionel kicks really well and he brings something to the attack as well. But there is a plan in place, Curwin Bosch has a very good boot at the back and he can counter-attack. But Lionel is our general and I’m sure he will execute the plan. A lot depends on what you get from the Bulls defence.

“They like numbers on their feet and they are really good at it. We will play what is in front of us and if they have a full defensive line then it means there will be space behind. A solid set-piece gave us the platform to beat the Bulls the last time we played them. If you get that right then it makes your job a lot easier. If we can do that again then I’m confident we can get the result,” Everitt said.

The Sharks coach said his team also have to avoid conceding a chain of penalties at the start of the final.

“If you look at the Sharks’ performances the last few games then our discipline has improved, but we conceded six or seven penalties in the first half of the semifinal and that put us under pressure, it meant we couldn’t build scoreboard pressure. In last season’s final, we also gave away a couple of early penalties which Morne Steyn kicked.

“Not conceding early penalties is important to how you want to play, you must never underestimate the influence of scoreboard pressure in a final. There will be nerves, and the team that settles down first will probably go on to make the better start. And that’s really important in a game of this magnitude. Both teams need to handle the intensity of the game,” Everitt said.

Sharks team: Curwin Bosch, Yaw Penxe, Werner Kok, Marius Louw, Thaakir Abrahams, Lionel Cronje, Sanele Nohamba, Phepsi Buthelezi (c), Henco Venter, Dylan Richardson, Gerbrandt Grobler, Le Roux Roets, Thomas du Toit, Kerron van Vuuren, Khwezi Mona. Bench – Dan Jooste, Ntuthuko Mchunu, Khutha Mchunu, Thembelani Bholi, Reniel Hugo, Lucky Dlepu, Jeremy Ward, Anthony Volmink.

Probably only the most ardent of South African rugby fans will know the name Dugald Macdonald, but he is Springbok number 470 having first slipped the famous Green and Gold jersey over his head in a third-floor room of the President Hotel in Sea Point, on 7 June 1974, while a typical Cape Town cold front splattered rain on to the balcony outside.

Macdonald would wear the jersey that had captured his imagination only once in a Test match, and that was actually a fortnight later when he played in the second Test against the British Lions at Loftus Versfeld. That’s because he was a reserve for the first Test at Newlands, and in those days the replacements sat in the stadium because the ‘bench’ was hardly ever used.

In a disastrous 3-0 series loss for the Springboks, he was destined to become one of the unfortunate one-Test wonders as the national selectors panicked and chose 36 different players for the four Tests, the final match in Johannesburg being drawn. According to veteran rugby writer John Bishop, who covered the entire tour, “Dugald should have been there from start to finish, he was one hell of a player. One of those guys who were simply forgotten about in the chaos of the 1974 tour, a powerful number eight with excellent ball skills. He should have been a Bok great”.

Macdonald has just released a book about the whole experience – the series being one of the most traumatic in South African rugby – called Ja-Nee. It is an engrossing look into the past, a study in how the mentality of Springbok rugby was built and how those attitudes still influence it today, but as with all great writing, it also brings applications and warnings for the future.

And it’s not just about rugby either. It provides a fascinating snapshot of White South African life in the 1970s. It is evocative, humorous and thought-provoking all at the same time.

The sun was shining brightly on that midwinter’s day in Pretoria, but Macdonald makes a decent argument for the Springboks not so much being panicky as arrogant. They were convinced that the Lions could not possibly be better than them and a few changes would sort out their scrum and allow them to dominate possession.

It’s a recurring story in our rugby: Back in 1992 when we returned from isolation and expected to still be better than Australia and New Zealand because “the Currie Cup is the strongest competition in the world” and instead lost both Tests comfortably. And then just last week the Bulls travelled from Pretoria to Italy, everyone back home confident that they would be returning from their jaunt with the Rainbow Cup, only to be played off the park by Benetton Treviso.

When South African rugby retreats into the laager mentality, we tend to become dangerously insular whenever we have been cut off from international trends.

Macdonald was not your typical Springbok of the 1970s, he was a city boy, schooled in Cape Town, he was an Oxford Blue and also played for Parma in Italy and Toulouse in France. Some might say paranoid 1970s South Africa was never likely to give him many more than one Test cap.

This broader world view has allowed him to identify an over-reliance on physicality as being a possible albatross around the necks of the current world champions, who have not played since outmuscling England in the World Cup final in Japan in November 2019. While the Springboks have been inactive, the rest of the world has been plotting.

“If we understood the roots of South African rugby then we’ll know why physicality has actually been responsible for many of our defeats. I fear we are winding up for another one because physicality is all the Lions are talking about. But if we don’t have technique and lucidity, physicality can only get you so far.

“Whenever we have just played inklim rugby it has been the beginning of the end, it’s been a problem down the years, and the same thing is growing again. Physicality is great at the right time and in the right place, but so much thought needs to go into it otherwise it’s helluva easy to get carried away. Fortunately we have really good leaders in the game now,” Macdonald told me.

*Ja-Nee is published by Flyleaf Publishing and is widely available in bookstores and online.