Ken Borland

The differing domestic circumstances of the Proteas women’s squad meant some of them had done no cricket-related work since the beginning of Lockdown in March when they arrived at their training camp in Pretoria, but coach Hilton Moreeng said on Friday that he is happy with the intensity shown this week.

A high performance squad of 24 was named to gather at the University of Pretoria for a skills-based training camp that ended on Friday. The Proteas were last on a cricket field 143 days previously when they were narrow losers to hosts Australia in the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup.

“The last time we were together was at the World Cup so we needed to get back into the swing of things. The camp went well, even though the environment is now totally different, there’s a new normal, which we realise and are slowly getting used to. We needed to press the reset button and if our tour to England happens in September then we need to know we’re ready and can hit the ground running.

“We needed to see where the players’ skills are. For some of them it was the first time they have picked up a bat since the World Cup because not all of them had the facilities to train properly. But I was very happy with the intensity I saw, that was good to see for our preparation for a possible tour and the upcoming 50-over World Cup. We needed to assess where the squad is and get everyone in the right frame of mind,” Moreeng said on Friday.

Moreeng was assisted by Dillon du Preez, the former Knights pace bowler, and the head coach, who still has to finalise his assistants, said he was impressed by his work.

Proteas vice-captain Chloe Tryon, who has been signed again by the Hobart Hurricanes for the Women’s Big Bash in Australia, said by focusing on the basics she has come out of the week-long camp happy with her progress.

“I just went back to basics in all aspects – batting, bowling and fielding – because it’s been a while since I played. So I just tried to keep it pretty simple and not just jump right in. I wanted to make sure that I mastered that first and my skills are now pretty good,” Tryon said.

It was a very exciting weekend of rugby – although obviously the SuperRugby results weren’t very good for South Africa – and the importance of competing hard at the breakdowns was shown in two of the biggest games of the weekend.

One of the positives for South African rugby to take out of the weekend was France beating England in such passionate, collision-dominant fashion. They really blitzed England at the breakdowns and the tackle and have certainly given the Springboks a blueprint for success in their June series against England. The things which worked for France are certainly tactics we can do as well.

Defensively, France really competed at the breakdown and were able to disrupt England’s really flat attack. The decision needs to be made by the Springboks to replicate this, although it also depends on what loose forward combination they choose. But the Springboks tend to prefer having 14 players on their feet, all defending in a row. I can remember Chean Roux and Rassie Erasmus preaching to us that for the first 15 minutes the Springboks mustn’t compete at all at the breakdown! Fortunately we ignored that.

Obviously England have breakdown problems away from home and they were only able to get go-forward when their finishers came on, guys like James Haskell and Kyle Sinckler. When they came on it solved their problem in terms of power in the collisions and I’m sure Eddie Jones would have learnt some lessons about having more power up front. Especially with two of the Tests against South Africa being played at altitude, the power factor really comes into play in what should be high-scoring games.

The Lions versus Blues game was also a very exciting encounter. The Blues gave it their all, they played with an utter sense of purpose and passion, and they played with that intensity for the full 80 minutes. Normally against the Lions at altitude, the wheels come off at the back end of the match – think back to the game against the Hurricanes in the semi-final last year and even against the Crusaders in the final when the Lions only had 14 men. The Lions certainly finished the stronger team in both those games.

But the Blues were the stronger finishers last weekend and I’m not convinced the balance of the Lions back row is correct. Playing lock is very different to blindside flank and the Lions have been at their best when Kwagga Smith, Warren Whiteley and Jaco Kriel have been their loose trio, along with Malcolm Marx at hooker. That group is good on the floor, at the breakdown and in the tackle, which enables them to slow down the opposition’s ball and win turnovers.

And because the Lions generally play to a 1-3-3-1 system, it means they usually have two back-rowers on the edge of the field, which provides them with strike power, certainly Smith and Kriel have given them real impetus in the past.

It’s not quite the same when you look at Franco Mostert playing that role, and then you look at the ease with which the Blues scrumhalf was able to get around him at scrum time. The Lions need to look at whether he should be persevered with at number seven; the problem is they are well-stocked at lock and maybe they feel their other back-row players aren’t up to the level needed.

With the loss of Whiteley for the next four games we will see whether the experiment will continue or whether the Lions will go down another road.

To be fair to the Blues, they were very disciplined and they gave a blueprint as to how to beat the Lions. They denied them entry into their own 22, from where they strike with their strong lineout and drive, and they obviously didn’t give them many penalties.

The Blues were also able to keep the ball, through many phases, and the Lions were just not able to get over the ball and get steals. The Lions defence was good, but there were few turnovers, so they were on the back foot for long periods of the game.

Aphiwe Dyantyi made two key interventions in the match – his interception try was absolutely superb and then his charge down of a restart, if he had just been able to gather the ball then the game would have been won … those are the small margins in SuperRugby.

But the major thing is that the Lions spent too long defending and the Blues got the confidence to come back. And what a good effort it was to come back from 21-3 down. At altitude things change quickly, but normally for the home team.

The Blues generally kicked off shape – in other words they would keep the ball in order to bring the Lions wings up and isolate Andries Coetzee at the back, meaning they were able to find space in the corners quite easily, and a good chase then meant the Lions were under pressure.

Most importantly, your scrum has to stand up to the opposition front five, and the Blues did that all game.

You have to credit the Blues for never running out of steam, and credit to the Lions for their part in a fantastic game of rugby. It shows the high standards of Swys de Bruin that he was very upset and complaining about his team at halftime, even though they were 21-10 up. Swys favours all-out attack, he has a simple philosophy of beating your man, he wants his players to take on their opposite number.

It’s been a big month for the Lions with two local derbies, but there will always be a slight let-up in intensity somewhere in the competition and there are times when you have to win when you are not at your best.

It was also interesting to note Marx being kept on the field for the whole time, so he’s now played four straight 80 minutes, even though Robbie Coetzee is not a bad replacement. The Lions are going to have to look at Marx’s workload.

I was with the Sharks at the weekend and I was able to visit my old Springbok friend Ricardo Loubscher, who is now coaching their SuperSport Rugby Challenge side. It was nice to exchange ideas with him and meet up with a lot of old friends at Kings Park.

I was also able to meet and chat with Alan Zondagh, the former Western Province coach, who has a great passion for attack. He raised a very interesting point that all teams play a similar style of attack these days – the 1-3-3-1, you see the same style from all the teams.

It will be an interesting weekend of SuperRugby again and I think the Lions will bounce back, they’ll be expecting five points as they have the good fortune to play the Sunwolves, and remain in a good position before they go on tour. I don’t think their slip-up against the Blues will be too costly because the Aucklanders are not really seen as contenders, and a bonus point win this weekend will see them still in a good position.

The Sharks now have a difficult run of four games away on tour and it was interesting to see coach Robert du Preez being so positive as to target four wins. That would be a first for a touring side!

The Bulls are in Hamilton, John Mitchell’s old stamping ground, to face the Chiefs and it will be interesting to see how they go. The Chiefs have been competitive this season, they beat the Blues before their good win this last weekend. It’s been an interesting change to have Damian McKenzie at flyhalf and I didn’t expect them to be as good as they have been. But in New Zealand they just seem to be able to rustle up fresh 100kg centres and wings that are flippen quick.

The Stormers have a home game against the Blues and it is non-negotiable to win at home if you are going to try and get a home semi-final. Anything away from home is a bonus. Just look at the Hurricanes, who were not very convincing against the Bulls but then smashed the Crusaders quite convincingly in Wellington last weekend.

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

Women’s sport has always taken the back seat in this macho country of ours, but the last 10 days have shown just how much can be achieved, and how much joy our female sports stars can bring us when they are provided with decent support.

The Proteas women’s cricket team are the obvious example and one could only salute a magnificent effort when they were pipped by eventual champions England in their World Cup semi-final, which was one of the classic games of the tournament as the hosts and favourites were so nearly undone by the tenacious underdogs.

Our national women’s cricket team have become the most-improved team in the game thanks to the wonderful support they have been given by Momentum and Cricket South Africa. Many young girls will have been inspired by their efforts and it is vital that the momentum created by their exploits is not lost.

The national women’s hockey team have just finished a global tournament of their own in the Hockey World League, which will go down as yet another international showpiece sporting event that we have hosted with aplomb.

Unfortunately, South African hockey does not have the same sort of backing as our cricketers, and it still sticks in the craw to see Investec, founded in Johannesburg in 1974, emblazoned all over the England team. But they have arguably more female talent than even the cricketers do simply because it has been ‘acceptable’ in our misogynistic society for women to play hockey for far longer than it has for cricket.

They showed that they have the ability to consistently be in the top-10 in the world rankings by finishing fifth in the Hockey World League Semifinals, pulling off a memorable win over eventual champions, the United States, as well as beating Ireland and Japan and finishing above India in the final standings. They also qualified automatically for the World Cup.

The obvious enjoyment they get from playing alongside each other, their tremendous team spirit, is one of their greatest assets, but sadly, it was obviously lacking from the men’s team, who managed to avoid relegation but did not win any other games.

Again, South Africa has the male talent to push for a top-10 place, with several of our players sought-after members of overseas clubs, which enables them to escape the poor economic prospects of an amateur sport in this country.

But it is this split-nature of the team – made up of locally-based and overseas-based players – that is causing problems, just as it did with Springbok rugby. According to players who are part of the expanded national squad, the environment in the camp is “hostile” and this threatens to scupper any hopes of our men’s team recouping the losses they have suffered over the last few years of neglect.

Sure, hockey overseas is more professional and better, but the returning players need to realise their job is to lift up their team-mates who are still slogging it out back at home, not belittle them. The team culture is non-existent, with some stars apparently staying in their own hotels, and it is up to the senior players to set an example.

Apart from results, there has been one casualty already with coach Fabian Gregory resigning to take up a position overseas. He says he battled to get his ideas through to the team, that he had a hard time dealing with certain “know-it-all” players.

The senior players, apparently, found it hard to take Gregory seriously as a coach, especially those who are based overseas.

So a new coach will have to be found before the Africa Cup in October – which will be crucial for World Cup qualification – and, hard as it will be for some absolute stalwarts of South African hockey, the time seems right to make a new start with the men’s team, who are really rather old in global terms.

My new broom would be Garreth Ewing, who was one of Gregory’s assistants at the Hockey World League, and I have been highly-impressed by the work he has done with both the SA U21 and University of Johannesburg sides, both in terms of the brand of hockey they play and the team culture he has grown.

It was an enthralling final Test between the All Blacks and the British & Irish Lions, and a tremendous achievement for the visitors to draw a series in New Zealand. Every international coach will have looked at the three Tests and will take something from them – it has shown it is possible to beat the All Blacks.

So how did the Lions achieve this?

Firstly, their defence over the three Tests was superb, so hats off to the Farrell family.

It’s no coincidence that most of New Zealand’s losses over the last few years have been caused by a rush defence and a high line speed, so Lions, England and Ireland defence coach Andy Farrell should really take a bow – he has now enjoyed three wins and a draw against the All Blacks since 2013.

And then there was his son Owen’s kicking. None of his kicks at goal in the last Test were gimmes and it was very interesting to see that even with Jonny Sexton, who has such a high success rate in his kicking record, at flyhalf, the Lions went with Farrell for goalkicking and that’s what made the difference in the end.

The All Blacks were disciplined in their own 22, but were prepared to give away penalties further away from their line, and Farrell kept the Lions in the game.

It was the defence that was able to disrupt the New Zealand attacking structure, they weren’t really able to go forward or get the ball wide, because the Lions totally dominated the gain-line and the rush-defence took time and space away from Beauden Barrett. But it didn’t operate from a tight base, the wings were on the second-last runners and would not always engage, sometimes they would back off on to the last runner, therefore there was no kicking space behind them.

The Lions also chose two openside flanks who were a real nuisance at the breakdown.

The biggest thing about the rush-defence is that it means you are so square in the tackle, you line up your man and come forward, there’s no shifting. The Lions tackling was very confrontational, they didn’t really hit the legs but tended to be just under the ball. This forced more errors and led to dominance in the tackle; a softer defence relies on leg-tackles and a confrontational rush-defence on chest tackles. You can see it unnerved the All Blacks and with the quality of defenders the Lions had – players like Jonathan Davies, Maro Itoje, Sam Warburton and Sean O’Brien – the system totally suited them.

The shift put in by the Lions forwards at the coalface was also amazing and New Zealand could not get any offloads or tip-passes going at all. The Lions cleverly took out the support players, so the ball was wide open at the breakdowns. The quality of the tackles and the athletes involved meant that on the tip-ons, they frequently took the passer out of play, which exposed the ball-carrier and then the turnover could happen.

What was especially interesting to me was that New Zealand just could not get the ball to the outside channels in space, and even if they tried, Barrett was frequently standing still and then it was easy for the Lions to pick off the carriers.

The way to break down the rush-defence is through the kick-pass and offloading from contact and it’s no coincidence that the All Blacks scored from this.

The Lions also relied tremendously on Conor Murray’s box-kicking. There was no messing around here – they would maul or box-kick immediately from the restart and that put pressure on the New Zealand wings, thanks to the quality of Murray’s kicking and exits.

For me, Murray was the real star of the series, his tactical control was superb; him kicking contestables meant the All Blacks never had a chance to counter-attack or get the ball back from the Lions back three with running bombs.

The New Zealand attack was very static. They wanted a two-sided attack against the rush-defence, but they played a lot of one-pass rugby, which made it quite easy to defend.

One of the key moments of the final Test was the chase back of Davies on Ngani Laumape after Barrett’s intercept, it was just superb. It was a series-turning moment and the other players get really excited when they see that sort of attitude and commitment from a team-mate.

It was an enthralling finish to the series, but it’s a pity to see such a great Test end with all the focus on Mr Roman Poite.

His eccentricities have been exposed even before Eden Park last weekend: there was the red card he gave Bismarck du Plessis at Eden Park in 2013, his performance in the World Cup and against Argentina in 2014 when there were seven water-carriers on the field during a stoppage and he allowed the Pumas to take a quick tap, which resulted in a try just before halftime. The last defender in the Springbok backline was our physio, Rene Naylor!

It was good, though, that Poite reviewed the incident at the end of last weekend’s game and I think Craig Joubert will be wishing he had done the same in 2015 in the Scotland v Australia game at the World Cup. That’s what the TMO is there for and at least Poite used it. But rugby has to eliminate these grey areas because referees have to make hard decisions in a very short time.

I thought Poite was also really poor in the lineouts, there was taking out of jumpers left, right and centre, it was like a free-for-all. New Zealand also seemed to have some dominance in that final scrum and there could have been a penalty to them, but again he opted out.

The All Blacks ended up playing a lot of guys with just a handful of caps, which is not what you want in high-pressured Tests. Injuries and Sonny Bill Williams’ self-inflicted absence obviously affected them and you want more caps for the big games like last weekend. They ended with Laumape at 12 and Anton Lienert-Brown at 13 and they are actually both inside centres, both confrontational and direct. The Lions started with a similar sort of player in Ben Te’o, but then switched to Sexton and Farrell and had far more ball-playing ability to stretch the All Blacks.

One has to credit coach Warren Gatland for wearing his red nose with pride. He might just hang around and is probably very excited about a third tour with the Lions, against the Springboks in 2021.

It will be interesting to see whether the Springboks pick Cheetahs or Kings players for that tour because it will be the end of their season in Europe!

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