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It was an ugly but comprehensive victory for the Wallabies over the Springboks at ABSA Stadium in Durban. So, after fifteen attempts, the Wallabies have finally won an away Test in the Tri-Nations tournament. But as the old sports adage says, “a win is a win is a win.”
Ugly or beautiful at the end of play it is the numbers on the scoreboard that ultimately count.
I had a feeling after the opening series of phases launched at the Wallaby tryline failed, with the defence moving the Springboks back in the tackles and then winning a crucial short arm penalty on a turnover that the Wallabies were going to win. The Springboks were strangely lethargic. They lacked organisation. They didn’t seem to have a coherent game. They made mistake after mistake.
As the errors piled up and the Wallabies took their score out to double figures and three scores in front, the crowd became more and more silent, as if they were at a funeral, which they were in a way – the burying of the Springboks Rugby World Cup glory.
At the end of the match the crowd showed its displeasure of what had happened by booing their team off the field. Sic transit gloria mundi. (So ends the glory of the world, the Latin motto shouted out by John Wilkes Booth after he assassinated President Lincoln.)
The South African authorities say that coach Peter de Villiers’ position is not under threat. Perhaps not, just yet. The captain, Victor Matfield, says that the team is committed to the expansive game being introduced by de Villiers. But as David Campese, who now lives in South Africa, noted in a column this week, teams can’t decide to play expansively and then expect the new strategy to work straight away.
The rewards for expansive rugby are high if it is done properly, with hatfuls of tries in the manner of the Springboks a few weeks ago when they scored about 60 points on the trot against the Pumas.
But if the strategy is not done properly and if the team selected to play the expansive game is not correctly selected – two factors that are in play with the current Springboks – then the team gets exposed to breakouts by their opposition when the wide play breaks down with poor passes and lost turnovers. The Springboks suffered 14 turnovers and numerous missed passes which were snaffled up by George Smith in the rucks and mauls and by the outside backs with the dropped passes.
Coach de Villiers is to be applauded for trying to add some additional dimensions to the traditional one-dimensional Springboks game. But he clearly does not understand that the expansive game can only be played with a clever distributor in the five-eights and with an industrious backrower who is excellent digging for the ball in the rucks and mauls in the George Smith/Richie McCaw/Neil Back mould. You only need one of these ‘fetchers,’ as the South African call them. But you do need that one player.
So the ambition to play expansively is not complemented with the selection of a side that can play this game. The Springboks have the ambition but not the means to play the sort of game the coach wants them to play.
Further, coach de Villiers does not understand that the expansive game, like any rugby strategy, must flow from a solid ball-winning play by the forwards. The Springboks scrum has improved but not so much that they can master the Wallabies at scrum time.
In fact, although the Wallaby scrum was crumpled a few times it generally won its ball and the penalties conceded at scrum time were one-all.
In trying to explain why the Springboks were penalised for ‘boring’, Phil Kearns could only make a weak joke about ‘boring play’.
The Fox Sports commentary, aside from the accurate call from Greg Clarke, badly needs the insights and information Rode Kafer brings to his Chalkboard analysis as a counter to the chauvinistic and meaningless shouting from the Kearns/Martin duo.
Rod Kafer would have told us something about the game plan organised by Robbie Deans, instead of the duo ranting against every decision that the excellent referee Lyndon Bray gave against the Wallabies.
It seemed to me that the Deans game plan was a simple one of contesting the contest areas strongly and running strongly down the middle of the field to expose the slow Springboks pack to having to defend both sides of the field. On many occasions, after the Wallabies switched play to another side of the field their backs found themselves confronted by members of the Springboks tight five having a bit of a breather.
The Wallabies contested the rucks and mauls ferociously and, again, exposed the weaknesses in the Springboks game plan.
That game plan called for the big loose forwards and the pacy secondrowers particularly to be out wide ready to break out from anywhere on the field. Springbok ball-runners were not supported when they were tackled and because they were out-numbered by swarming Wallabies found it difficult to release the back to their halfback. The consequences were a flow of short-arm penalties for not releasing/playing the ball on the ground, and many turnovers.
The Springboks are now in a terrible situation. They have lost the rump of their RWC team, especially their hard man Bakkies Botha and their experienced captain John Smit. Their normally ‘best’ players like Victor Matfield, Butch James and Percy Montgomery as bone tired after a long northern winter and are playing well below their best. They don’t have a world class ‘fetcher’ or five-eight. They have lost three Tri-Nations Tests in a row.
You could almost feel sorry for the Springboks until you remembered C J van der Linde, the continually thuggish prop, head-butting Sam Cordingley as the Springboks lost yet another ruck as the Wallabies poured in numbers to the breakdown.
Ellis Park, Johannesburg, has been a citadel of Afrikaaner rugby. It suddenly looks like a very vulnerable citadel for next Saturday’s Test.