Ken Borland

Steven Kitshoff has spent a long time sharing the Springbok loosehead duties with the great Tendai Mtawarira, but now that the ‘Beast’ has retired, the Stormers powerhouse will be the undisputed wearer of South Africa’s No.1 jersey in the series against the British and Irish Lions, but says being in the hot seat is not going to change his approach to Test rugby.

Mtawarira is the most-capped Springbok prop ever with 117 appearances stretching from 2008 to the triumphant 2019 World Cup final. Kitshoff made his Test debut in 2016 and has amassed 47 caps, but only 12 of those have been starts.

“Playing with and behind Beast was a massive honour and it was a privilege to learn from him. He is one of the great legends of the game. But now that he has retired, I’ll bring a similar approach as before to the game, I’ll focus on just doing my job the best I can for the team, and be willing to sacrifice for the team. My preparation will be the same.

“I’ll be putting in the same hard work every week leading up to the game. I’ll just be trying my best to represent my country and uphold the jersey as best I can, because I remember back in 2009, I was still in Grade XI and it was awesome to watch Beast scrum Phil Vickery on the last Lions tour here,” Kitshoff said.

The absence of Mtawarira robs the Springboks of one of their main leaders and has been exacerbated by the probable loss of Duane Vermeulen to an ankle injury. And while inspirational skipper Siya Kolisi will still very much have his hands on the tiller, Kitshoff says it will be all hands on deck in terms of the other leaders in the team stepping up.

“Duane plays a massive role in the side. I have no idea how long his rehab is going to take and I wish him all the best and a speedy recovery. He will definitely be missed, but we have a great group of players and leaders who are ready to step up and sacrifice anything for the jersey. There are still unbelievable leaders in the group and there are key guys running certain positions.

“That makes the game so much easier because it helps you control certain situations. As senior players now we must just step up and make sure we bring our side of the deal. Playing against the Lions is always one of the hardest series, up there with the World Cup, the toughest few weeks of your life. We’re working day-by-day to get our stuff in order and to have clarity in playing to our strengths,” Kitshoff said.

The Proteas are off to the Caribbean on Monday and, having gathered on Friday, new captain Dean Elgar has spent the weekend almost trying to market his new leadership style to an expanded squad of 19 players.

Elgar is one of the characters of the changeroom, and is often considered a joker, but he has shown he has strong leadership credentials at the Titans and certainly commands the respect of the players. But a new era begins next week, post the captaincy tenures of Faf du Plessis and Quinton de Kock, and Elgar has been making sure everyone is on the same page as to the way things are going to be done now.

“We had a great chat on our first night together, when I mapped out how I see things going forward and we had a conversation around that. It was very constructive and those conversations will be ongoing over the next few weeks. I want to try and change the mindsets going forward, it’s a challenge with 18 different individuals who all have different opinions.

“So I’m trying to get buy-in, get the guys to trust the process. Hopefully some of what I’ve done in the past can rub off on the players, they need to know they can rely on me and follow me. We haven’t played much Test cricket lately, so it’s been difficult to get a process going that would make us competitive. I had a lot of quality conversations with Graeme Smith through the years and I would be letting the team down if I didn’t use that,” Elgar said at the weekend.

The 33-year-old Elgar said he would be leaning on other players who have been part of the Test squad for more than five years like Temba Bavuma, Quinton de Kock, Keshav Maharaj and Kagiso Rabada, because their experience will be vital for a rebuilding side.

“Those players are so valuable and there is a great demand for them around the world of cricket, you can’t replicate their knowledge. There’s not a lot of experience floating around at the moment, so their presence is massive for the environment. It was a totally different era when I started playing Test cricket under Graeme Smith, we had a lot more caps around then.

“But I would like to try and use my learnings from back then, use the knowledge I gained. That time moulded me and taught me a lot of good lessons, so I would like to bring that into this side. We need to get back to scoring big hundreds, bowlers taking five-fors and taking 20 wickets to win a Test. There used to be that rich culture of success and with extended squads now we have all the options we need,” Elgar said.

Springbok great Bryan Habana spent enough time playing in Europe to know exactly what it would entail for South African rugby to ditch Sanzaar and move into Northern Hemisphere competitions, and the 2007 World Cup winner is not totally sold on the idea, he said on Wednesday.

There has been global speculation that the world champions will leave Sanzaar after the 2023 World Cup to play in an expanded Six Nations tournament as well as their SuperRugby franchises joining European competitions like the Pro14 and Champions Cup. There has also been talk emanating from Australia of Sanzaar excluding teams from both South Africa and Argentina and focusing on just a trans-Tasman competition with New Zealand.

Habana, who scored a South African record 56 SuperRugby tries for the Bulls and Stormers, finished his career spending five years playing for Toulon so he has intimate knowledge of European competition.

“There’s been a lot of debate about South Africa joining the Northern Hemisphere but right now nobody even knows when rugby will be back in South Africa. Probably the one thing most needed by rugby is a global season. But I suppose the one question is whether Sanzaar need SA Rugby, they have been an important part of Sanzaar for the last 25 years.

“For those in the UK and Europe it’s much easier to watch games in South Africa than those in New Zealand or Australia. But it’s important to see where the Springboks and SuperRugby teams could fit in and they would have to fit in with the Northern Hemisphere schedule. I don’t see our guys enjoying playing in 5⁰ in December/January and how are our rugby fans going to enjoy watching rugby over Christmas when they’re on holiday?” Habana said on Wednesday in a virtual press conference to announce the launch of MatchKit.co, a mobile tech platform intended to help athletes grow their commercial brands, set up by the Retroactive agency of which he is a partner.

There have also been suggestions South African teams could play in both Sanzaar and the Northern Hemisphere, expanding the current involvement of the Free State Cheetahs and the Southern Kings in the Pro14, but Habana said the workload on the players even if they were just involved in Europe would be immense.

“When Toulon won the double in 2014/15 they played more than 40 games and player welfare is important. If we’re going to add four more teams and include the Springboks in the Six Nations then that would mean even more matches. There are advantages to both hemispheres, the players would learn more about foreign conditions and that allows you to develop more as a rugby player and as a person.

“To say who has the better standard of play though is very subjective because what determines a good standard? The Northern Hemisphere has come strongly to the fore in the last few years: In the 2015 World Cup the top four sides were all from the Southern Hemisphere, but in 2019 it was very different [England, New Zealand, Wales, South Africa]. Hopefully our decision-makers will choose what is best for the game as a whole,” Habana said.

Mark Charlton has been promoted to high performance manager for the Titans, having won four trophies in the last three years with the Northerns team, and he says the rapid progress of players who have spent time in the amateur provincial competitions shows how important the second tier of domestic cricket is for the pipeline.

The Grahamstown product was understandably delighted with the recent news that Cricket South Africa CEO Haroon Lorgat had said they were aiming to uplift the semi-professional level rather than create a seventh franchise.

“If you look at the senior provincial teams and what they do in the South African landscape, it’s a brilliant job. Guys like Aiden Markram and Heinrich Klaasen spent four seasons with me at Northerns and then after one franchise season they’re on the verge of the national squad. A guy like Lungi Ngidi spent one-and-a-half seasons with me, one-and-a-half with the Titans and then made the national team. Tabraiz Shamsi is another guy who played a lot of semi-pro cricket, there are a lot of guys like that.

“The profile of that level needs to be lifted, the Africa Cup has been brilliant in that respect, we need to raise the level of their exposure. So it’s great news if CSA back that, because the second tier produces some really hard, tough cricket. We [Northerns] tested ourselves against Leicestershire recently, with just nine of our regular players and we beat them, plus we’ve beaten the whole Ireland team before. So the standard is pretty good and we do our job when it comes to producing players,” Charlton told The Citizen.

Charlton subscribes to the belief that good people make better sportsmen, and says a key part of Northerns’ success was ensuring the players were as honourable off the field as they were excellent on it.

“We tried five years ago to put the building blocks in place with a code of behaviour and ethics that was about how we were seen and how we saw ourselves. It was our core policy, about how we operate. The basis of the team was very young and inexperienced back then, but I felt they could be champions and they’ve showed it.

“Since that start five years ago, we’ve produced eight Titans players. My job was to look at young talent and take them to the next level. In terms of selection, I tried to stay as consistent as possible, to give guys opportunities to perform. We’re very lucky with players from the local universities and schools, there’s always a lot of quality coming through. Cobus Pienaar, Shershan Naidoo, Markram, Klaasen and captain Thomas Kaber have all been brilliant and I’ve just tried to keep players together and moving in the same direction,” Charlton said.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-kzn/20170603/282089161734028