Ken Borland

Munster coach Graham Rowntree hailed a top-class performance and a plan coming together as the defending champions moved into the top three of the United Rugby Championship standings with a tenacious 27-22 win over the Bulls in Pretoria.

The bonus point win saw Munster leapfrog the Bulls, deserved reward for beating the South African powerhouses at their home fortress of Loftus Versfeld, where they had previously not been beaten this season in the URC.

A beautifully-controlled first half saw Munster lead 17-10, but the Bulls mounted a strong comeback in the third quarter to take a 22-17 lead. But a red card for a head-on-head tackle by flyhalf Johan Goosen in the 54^th minute was a big turning point against the home side.

A pair of tries in the 58^th and 74^th minutes sealed a hard-fought win for Munster and the 53-year-old Rowntree was a delighted coach afterwards.

“The composure was special today, we had a good plan at altitude and stuck to it. We were in a good place at halftime but not so good in the third quarter. But we are used to these end-of-season pressure games, we have learnt to deal with adversity and move on quickly, and we had a great bench today.

“We had to stick to the plan with great skill, there was no panic. We had to kick very smartly, go away from the way we’ve been doing things for the last two years, when we have generally tried to keep the ball on the field.

“There are still elements of our game that need to be better, but this was an incredible performance against a team we really respect. They have power and pace and can really rip teams apart and we needed to be so much better at the start of the second half. But we believe in our defence, it’s one of the best in the league. It’s got to be against such a powerful team,” Rowntree said.

While Bulls coach Jake White said Goosen’s red card was a 50/50 decision that could have been deemed a ‘rugby incident’, Rowntree said it was an obvious call.

“I thought it was quite clear and easy. There was no mitigation and I was happy with the process. We make sure that we keep our tackles low, we practise that late drop into the tackle,” the former England prop said.

Wing Shane Daly, the scorer of the opening try, said Munster were a team with belief.

“We believe in ourselves, we play against the big teams and we get the results. That’s the big thing about this team,” Daly said.

Munster will next take on the Lions, who slayed top-of-the-log Leinster on the weekend, at Ellis Park.

As a human being, Mark Boucher seems to lack the gene for a fear of failure which made him one of the most tenacious cricketers around, but now as a coach he has admitted to frustration that that is exactly the weakness his Proteas team showed as they crashed to a series loss to Bangladesh in humiliating fashion in the third and final ODI at Centurion on Wednesday evening.

Choosing to bat first, South Africa’s batsmen folded meekly to 154 all out in 37 overs. Bangladesh them showed them how to bat on the SuperSport Park pitch as they raced to victory in just 26-and-a-half overs with just one wicket down.

“We lacked intent, we went to sleep after a good start to our innings,” Boucher said after the loss. “We wanted to take the game forward, you do need to take some risks, but there was almost a fear of getting out.

“It was as if we were not batting to set a total, which Bangladesh showed should have been more than 300, but batting to not get out, and then we spiralled into a total collapse.

“We need to have belief in how we play, we’ve played spin very well in places like Sri Lanka but then we come back here and go back to old ways. We have to have faith to play the way we want to play.

“We wanted to be proactive, we have worked hard on shot-selection and the guys know they have the armoury. But it’s like a mental block. We need to put the fear of failure out of our minds, the fear of getting out,” Boucher said.

What is baffling, however, is that much the same team beat India 3-0 in January and they should have had the confidence of a billionaire on the front cover of Forbes magazine. Boucher said the vagaries of form had also played a role in the shock series defeat.

“Against India we had guys in great form and there were big partnerships. In this series we lost an aggressive player like Aiden Markram whose form is worrying, so new guys come into the team.

“In the back of their heads they probably want to get runs to prove that they belong here, and that brings in a bit of fear. Maybe they are too scared to play the way they should.

“So it comes down to a lack of form and belief,” Boucher said.

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