Ken Borland

Everyone can see that the Springboks are not getting the results for the amount of effort they are putting in, but there is real pressure on them against France at the Stade de France. If they lose this weekend then that will be three defeats on the bounce which is not a good return.

Coach Rassie Erasmus will only have a 41% winning record if the Springboks lose to France, but we can see progress in their performances this year.

Last weekend against England was another Test that got away from Rassie and the Springboks though, who simply made too many mistakes.

In terms of Owen Farrell’s controversial last tackle, it was definitely, according to the laws, a clear penalty and yellow card. It was certainly a big shot, with the defender just trying to get his body in the way of the carrier, he made good shoulder contact but there were no arms involved. In fact, it is very hard to get the arms around when you are making that sort of tackle. The height as well was definitely penalisable.

The Springboks’ error-rate was particularly costly at lineout time and there were two main functions responsible for that – their alignment and the timing between the jumper and Malcolm Marx, who was having a technical issue with his throwing.

Having worked with Malcolm on his throwing between the ages of 18 and 21, plus being head-on with hookers throwing to the lollipop for 20 years, I can see exactly what went wrong. It’s like a golf swing and I can see if the shoulders, fingers or hips are wrong when he throws.

The Springboks used the middle pod a lot in their phase play, they play a 1-3-2-2, but after playing across the field you always eventually end up on the edge. Both teams tried to put the middle pod under pressure, but England did it better, making good reads with their defensive rush getting on top. The Springboks needed to play out the back more, while England did look to use their second line on attack and enjoyed a lot of success with that in the second half.

The Springboks were able to get tremendous field position in the first half through their scrum and maul, but the problem was, when you maul a lot, it means you get slow ball afterwards with forwards behind forwards latchers.

South Africa’s kicking game was good and with a few better bounces they would have had England under real pressure. They played two phases and kicked as they have done in their last six Tests, and found good space behind the England wingers. Scrumhalf Ivan van Zyl’s box-kicking was good, and it was a real war of the boot between him and Ben Youngs.

England regained the ball well though in the second half and they had the Springboks under pressure. In a gainline battle like last weekend’s Test, those aerial duels are crucial.

Damian de Allende found areas in which he was able to get outside the rush defence from behind the middle pod, he was able to find space, getting over the advantage line with good footwork, and he really gave the Springboks go-forward. Damian is now a regular in the team and he should consistently be putting in performances like that.

The Springboks used Warren Whiteley more in the wide channels, on the edge of the attack a lot, and Duane Vermeulen was under a lot of high balls, so they were a good loose-forward combination.

It was a very tactical game at Twickenham, with a lot of mauls, but England just had a bit more fluidity. The one real positive for the Springboks was the scrummaging, they absolutely destroyed England and got two tightheads, which is quite something at that level. The one crucial scrum penalty against them at the end was a 50/50 call though.

I’m really looking forward to this weekend’s game, I’ve gained a great respect for French rugby over the last four months. It’s going to be a big midfield battle against the two powerhouse French centres, Gael Fickou and Mathieu Basteraud. Flyhalf Camille Lopez is a great tactician and has a good kicking game, and plays flat on the gainline.

And the French forward pack is never poor.

Sbu Nkosi and Aphiwe Dyantyi were very good for the Springboks against England, but I’m looking forward to Willie le Roux and Faf de Klerk adding a bit more spark.

Stade Francais assistant coach John McFarland 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. From 2001 to 2012 he won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls. McFarland enjoyed three years with the Kubota Spears in Tokyo from 2016-18.

The Springboks’ game against England at Twickenham on Saturday is something to look forward to, but it will be played in very different conditions to the World Cup in Japan in September.

Next year’s showpiece tournament will be played on super-fast, hard fields and the weather will be hot. In England at this time of year, the fields are very different and it’s cold, with the Springboks coming from temperatures of 30 degrees to just six or seven degrees.

There has been some consistency in coach Rassie Erasmus’s selection: There has to be 10 Tests into his tenure, that’s what you would expect. There are a few youngsters he is going to have a look at but there are also one or two surprises in his squad.

The selection of Schalk Brits as the third hooker is intriguing. He is a 37-year-old who has started just one of his 11 Tests. It’s ironic that Schalk is mentoring Malcolm Marx who has more Test caps than he has. Some people have drawn parallels to when Heyneke Meyer recalled Victor Matfield, but the lock had played 110 Tests when he was recalled in June 2014, and he had played a full season of SuperRugby.

Gio Aplon has also been recalled at the age of 36 and also from semi-retirement, playing in Japan’s top league, which is a mix of corporate workers and professional rugby players. Gio obviously has talent and good feet, but he’s going to find Test rugby a whole different pace and the intensity of the collisions will be far greater, everything will just happen much quicker.

Amongst the other players brought in, JD Schickerling is probably the next lock in, while Lood de Jager is fresh and a proven international performer. With the injuries to Lukhanyo Am and Lionel Mapoe, Ruhan Nel is also next in line for the number 13 jersey and the Springboks management called him into the squad earlier this year as well.

I am surprised none of the Du Preez brothers were chosen.

Jean-Luc is so physical and has such a big impact on the gain-line, while Daniel was selected earlier this year. Robert has now won successive Currie Cups with different teams and has proven game-management ability. The fact that Damian Willemse was not picked at flyhalf by Western Province for such a big game as the Currie Cup final tells you something about his game-management. But at least Robert gets to go to Sale now and it will be good for him to play with Faf de Klerk.

The Springboks’ contracted and Japan-based players should be fresh. They will all be ready to go, and it is a shame that the England game is outside the international window, so South Africa won’t be able to field their strongest side.

These Autumn internationals are going to sort England out after their six-match losing run earlier this year. They play the Springboks, Australia and New Zealand in the next few weeks and then we will really be able to see where they are heading into World Cup year.

The big thing for the Springboks is that they won’t have the safety net of playing on the Highveld, and John Mitchell, England’s new defence coach, knows the South African players well and would have been part of the coaching structures while he was with the Bulls. He and Jacques Nienaber would have had meetings about the blueprints for defence and the breakdown. He will intimately know the Bok defensive system.

Mitchell will implement a very high press and rush line-speed in the English defence; it’s a very high-risk system and the Bulls struggled to master it. Their defensive record was 14^th in SuperRugby, after having a full Currie Cup as well to implement the system.

It’s ironic that Mitchell ended the SuperRugby campaign saying he was looking for a specialist defence coach because of this defensive record, and now he’s the defence coach of a top-four international team.

England gave the Springboks real problems out wide in June, because the South Africans were far too tight in defence. But what cost the English at the end of the day was staying on the coast, they were in that death zone in the last 10 minutes of the first half and the last 20 of the second half in the first two Tests in Johannesburg and Bloemfontein. Duane Vermeulen was very destructive at the breakdown at the back end of both halves because England couldn’t get their cleaners to the breakdown.

England coped very well in the wet at Cape Town in terms of fielding the Springbok high-ball, box-kick strategy, using Mike Brown as the principal catcher, who has now been dropped. It shows that four months is a very short time in international rugby.

I believe the Springboks will again launch, then pass to a second runner forward, and then choose to kick left or right and put the ball behind England, which makes it very difficult for the fullback to defend. It’s a conservative strategy but it puts pressure on the opposition and the tactic had success against New Zealand in the two games this year.

The Springboks will want to play two phases and then kick behind, this is a really good tactic against a high line and a press defence because there is always space at the back because the wings are up. It will be a test though for the two young scrumhalves on tour, can they execute this strategy?

Plus there’s no Willie le Roux for this weekend, which is maybe why Aplon is there, in fact that is the most probable explanation for his selection. Rassie will want to turn England and make them exit, bringing into play the massive Springbok lineout which will have four excellent jumpers. So he needs a right and left-footed combination at flyhalf and fullback and height to compete on the England lineout.

The key for the Springboks will be the box-kick, because they maul so much, and Erasmus learnt during his time with Munster how important a kicking game from scrumhalf is, and De Klerk has done really well this year in that regard. England will be preparing for a barrage of box-kicks after the maul.

The Northern Hemisphere tour is always exciting for the players because they get to play in those places up north only once a year. They also don’t train much because there’s no way you can improve their fitness at this late stage of the year, and the preparation is just about getting the organisation and strategy right, and making sure they are mentally fresh for Saturday.

John McFarland is the assistant coach at Stade Francais, having been 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. From 2001 to 2012 he won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls. McFarland enjoyed three years with the Kubota Spears in Tokyo from 2016-18.

Warren Whiteley has come in from the cold in terms of his return to rugby but, as brilliant as he thinks the inspirational Lions leader is, former Springbok eighthman and skipper Morne du Plessis believes he should not resume the captaincy of the national team just yet.

Whiteley was the first-choice Springbok captain last year, leading the team in the first two Tests against France before tearing his groin and being ruled out of action for the rest of 2017. He has only recently returned to SuperRugby action due to a knee injury.

In his absence, and that of Eben Etzebeth, who took over the reins from Whiteley last year, new Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus appointed Siya Kolisi as the 61st national rugby captain, to tremendous acclaim and immediate success with the series win over England.

“There’s no need for me to tell Rassie Erasmus what to do, but I believe consistency is very important. It’s tough on Warren, but he has been injured. There’s no question Siya is the right captain, it’s the right time and right place for him. Warren’s time will come again, but he needs to get back into the team first.

“Siya has really put a marker down now and he’s captain, that’s it for me. I’ve been very impressed with his caring nature, he looks after a lot of his family and every time we have worked with him at the Chris Burger/Petro Jackson Fund he has always gone beyond the call of duty,” Du Plessis, who captained South Africa 15 times between 1975 and 1980, said at a Laureus Sport for Good Foundation breakfast this week.

Du Plessis carries the letters ‘OIS’ after his name these days, which indicate he has been awarded the Order of Ikhamanga Silver Class by the president for excellent achievement in sport, so he is well-placed to comment on the leadership abilities of Kolisi.

“You don’t have to know Siya intimately to know he is obviously a special human being. The whole question of whether you are born or raised a leader is still being debated, whether those skills are natural or groomed, but I would say Siya is a bit of both. He has inherent talents and characteristics, but these have been nurtured by hard times, mentorship and support,” Du Plessis said.

https://citizen.co.za/sport/south-africa-sport/sa-rugby-sport/1984354/theres-only-one-guy-right-for-the-springbok-captaincy/

Whenever a governing body hands a coach a long-term contract it is an expression of faith in that person’s ability to succeed, whatever the vagaries of sport or that old chestnut that there are only two types of coaches – those that have been fired and those that are still going to be fired. Remembering of course that the longer a contract, the bigger the payout should it be prematurely terminated.

So to say SA Rugby have faith in new Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus is an understatement, given that they have given him a six-year contract, the longest in any sport in the world, longer than Pep Guardiola or Jose Mourinho.

But their extraordinary decision has certainly had a positive effect judging by the bravery with which Erasmus and his team approached their first four assignments.

Given that he has such job security and knows his buddies in the SA Rugby boardroom want him to have the job, Erasmus was able to make some bold selection calls against Wales and England, and his courage certainly seemed to have rubbed off on the players, given the ambitious rugby they produced and the way they bounced back from big deficits to win the first two Tests against the English.

The fear of failure that characterised the Allister Coetzee years has seemingly gone and a young, inexperienced team showed signs of blossoming into something wonderful. Coetzee had good reason to believe the administrators were waiting for him to fail and it showed in his conservative selections and game plan.

Judging by his first month as coach, it seems the Springboks are in good hands with Erasmus.

The players certainly seem to have enjoyed his coaching and, most importantly, you had to give them 10/10 for character with the way one of the most inexperienced sides in Springbok history overcame a horror start at Ellis Park and another poor opening quarter in Bloemfontein.

Which is not to say everything is perfect in the Springbok camp ahead of the Rugby Championship starting in August. But given the number of players who are just starting out on their international careers, who knows whether what we saw against England is 50% or 80% of their potential.

Probably the area which requires the biggest improvement is the mental side of the game and their ability to adapt to conditions that don’t suit them. Although it was heartening to see the intensity and pace with which they played in the first two Tests, there are times – such as when Newlands is a sodden quagmire – when you have to play the percentages better.

Ellis Park and Bloemfontein – both on the highveld and with weather suiting a quick game – are obviously very much in the Springboks’ comfort zone. The indiscipline and basic errors of the Newlands display indicated a team that was just a bit freaked out by very different conditions.

Since the last World Cup, South Africa have won just three of their last 14 games away from home. The challenges of playing in Mendoza, Brisbane and Wellington lie ahead. Mendoza is the heartland of Argentinean rugby and they pump up the passion even more there, making it a hostile place for visiting teams. The Springboks have won just once in 12 attempts in Brisbane and they have not been able to beat the All Blacks in Wellington since 1998.

But given the honesty of the straightshooting Erasmus in dealing with the negative aspects of his first four games in charge, I’m sure he will not be shying away from the tough questions that need to be asked in order to sort out the Springboks’ issue with playing in foreign conditions.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-kzn/20180630/282574493816989