Dire thoughts on a massacre at Johannesburg

 
Spiro Zavos Columnist

By , 1 Sep 2008 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert

Tagged:
 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

200 Have your say

Related coverage



Sports Highlights

Watch more sports news video



Australia\'s Wycliff Palu, left, attempts a tackle against South Africa\'s Pierre Spies, right, during the Tri-Nations rugby match at the Coca-Cola Park in Johannesburg, South Africa, Saturday Aug. 30, 2008. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

The Springboks destruction of the Wallabies was the sort of defeat that gives massacres a bad name. This was a thrashing, a walloping and a devastation.

Go through the thesaurus to find all the words for a massacre – a general slaughter, utter defeat, destruction and so on – and you get a feel for what happened at the citadel of Afrikaner rugby pride and power, Coca-Cola (formerly Ellis) Park in Johannesburg.

The Springboks were the ferocious mongols of Ghengis Khan: and the Wallabies were the hapless villagers put to the sword and fire with a vengeance and brutality.

In the manner of wiping away the blood from a victim, lets get some of the statistics out of the way.

This was the greatest margin of defeat for a Wallaby side, 45 points in arrears, since the team started playing Test rugby in 1899.

It was the second-largest points total conceded since that awful day in 1997 at Pretoria when the Springboks ran riot and scored a total of 61 points to 22.

The Wallabies have now won one of 9 Tests at Johannesburg. The one and only victory was in 1963 when John Thornett side, with the wonderful lineout leaping of Rob Heming, defeated the Springboks. This victory followed a victory in the Test before. Thornett’s side remains the Australian team to win two Tests in succession in South Africa against the Springboks.

When things go as badly wrong as this, it’s because everything goes wrong.

The five replacements to the winning team at Durban weakened the side, rather than strengthened it with new energy.

A couple of the replacements, for Daniel Vickerman and Berrick Barnes, were forced on Robbie Deans. The dropping of Stephen Moore as hooker, bringing in Matt Dunning to start in the front row and playing Phil Waugh ahead of George Smith were own goals scored by the Wallaby coach.

Dunning was substituted after 20 minutes and one would think that after Brisbane his Wallaby career is over.

Waugh showed once again that he is too small and just not a good enough player, especially at the linking game with his running and passing, to be a starter in Test rugby. Like Dunning, you would think that Waugh’s career as a Wallaby is coming to an end and some of the young loosies from the Western Force will be brought into the squad for the November tour.

The Wallaby lineout held up well, especially on the Springboks ball. Victor Matfield, usually so dominant, lost a number of lineouts.

And the Wallaby scrum, aside from a crucial scrum on its tryline when the side was leading 3 – 0 that the Springboks demolished, was adequate.

The Wallabies also did well enough in the rucks and mauls, especially when George Smith came on, to have enough ball to do well in general play.

The experiment with Timana Tahu, though, was a desperate failure. He started well with a long flat pass out to Lote Tuqiri’s wing but it was downhill all the way after that. He seemed to have no idea about defence and for the first time in years the Wallabies were being outflanked easily virtually every time the Springboks ran the ball through the backs.

Rugby league tragics are going to be angry at what I say next, so if you don’t want to read the truth drop down a couple of paragraphs. The truth is this: the days when rugby league greats like Rod Reddy could help the Wallabies win a Rugby World Cup (1991, in fact) by teaching them RL tackling methods and systems are long gone. The rugby league players of today just do not have the tackling nous of their rugby union counterparts, when they play rugby union.

We saw this with Wendell Sailor, often with Lote Tuqiri, always with Mat Rogers and now with Tahu. He reminded me of Andy Farrell’s efforts for England at inside centre a couple of years ago, especially when the Irish centres ran riot – rather like the Springboks on Saturday – with Farrell making all the wrong defensive choices (like Tahu).

Perhaps even more similiar was the case of Henry Paul who was hooked from the side on his debut at inside centre for England against Australia after about 20 minutes of being exposed defensively by the Wallaby centres. Tahu lasted 53 minutes, about half an hour too long.

Ryan Cross, a rugby league player admittedly but a former Australian Schoolboys rugby union player, made an immediate difference when he came on.

I think the Timana Tahu experiment is over for the time being and Deans will have to work out a centre combination of Stirling Mortlock-Ryan Cross for the crucial Brisbane Test against the All Blacks.

Also over, surely, is the fancy of playing Adam Ashley-Cooper ahead of Drew Mitchell at fullback. Ashley Cooper was too often out of position. His kicking was poor. His following up was even worse. There was a big improvement in the way the Wallabies handled the long kicking game of the Springboks when Mitchell came on. But by then, as Rex Mossop used to say: ‘Hang up your glasses. The horse has bolted.’

The Wallabies were tactically inept. Early on in the game they tried to run the ball in confused and confined circumstances from inside their own 22. The result was turnover after turnover, especially from bad handling, which got worse as the players tired rapidly. The Springboks exploited Tahu’s ineptitude at reading back plays, and the points piled on.

Of all the major rugby grounds in the world, with the exception of Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria, Coca-Cola Park at Johannsburg is the worst ground in the world to try and run the ball inside your 22. Because of the altitude of the high veldt the ball travels much further than at sea level. So you get field position very easily by belting the ball downfield, and you hope that the opposition is stupid enough to try to run it back at you – which the Wallabies did.

When they did try to counter-attack with the kick-and-chase game they kicked far too deep, and there was no chase, until Mitchell came on to replace Ashley-Cooper.

If you watch the All Blacks their kick-and-chase game in their last two Tests was very successful because the winger positioned himself beside the fullback and ran on as soon as the ball was kicked to put pressure on the catcher. The Wallabies did not do this. Tuqiri is actually very good in the air. But where was his chase? He’s always complaining about not getting enough ball and so on. But he is a lazy player. Forget about his handling mistakes. He does very little work off the ball, particularly on the kick-chase game, and the Wallabies are at a disadvantage because of this.

It seemed to me that the difficulties of playing at altitude got to the Wallabies very early on in the game. After one early long sequence of play you could hear Matfield in his high-pitched voice shouting as the referee NZer Bryce Lawrence, ‘The Wallabies are faking injuries.’ There was a leaden-footed aspect to the play of the Wallabies that suggested that they were feeling the pressure of the lack of oxygen to their lungs and couldn’t get their second wind.

This brings us to the matter of how visiting teams should deal with having to play at altitude. The theory that works best, according to people who should know, is that you spend as long as you can at the altitude and acclimatise to it, a week before the Test if possible: or you go up as late as possible, the day before the Test, if possible.

Several days at altitude, apparently, leaves you in the worst possible position of a long exposure to the thin air but not enough time to acclimatise. This is what the Wallabies did. And the result was the massacre.

Deans now has the record of the first win in South Africa by the Wallabies in 8 years, and the worst defeat (in terms of a points-margin) in 109 years. Rooster one day, it seems, feather duster the next.

The Test in Brisbane against the All Blacks for the 2008 Tri-Nations championship now looms as a huge challenge for the Wallabies. Two slightly hopeful aspects, one short term and the other long term, emerge from all the – justifiable – doom, gloom and recriminations.

First, the short term message is that a number of the players starting on Saturday can’t be starters against the All Blacks. So selection mistakes should not occur for the next Test. And you would think, too, that the game plan for the side would be more appropriate to the skill level of the side.

Second, the long term message is that teams can recover from massacres. The Springboks came back from two comprehensive losses to score some marvellous tries and win one of their great Test victories.

Also, Rod Macqueen, as the new coach, took 13 of the Wallabies involved in the massacre at Pretoria in 1997 to a famous RWC triumph in 1999.

Robbie Deans and the Wallabies trying together the body and soul of the Wallabies after the Johannesburg massacre should take note of this splendid mantra: ‘The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.’

Jim Beam Devil's Cut

As bourbon ages, a portion of liquid is lost from the barrel due to evaporation. This is known as the Angel's Share. When the bourbon is taken from the barrel, a certain amount is left trapped within the wood. It's that extracted liquid, and the rich flavours from deep within the barrel that are in Jim Beam's Devil's Cut.

Click here to learn more about Jim Beam's wicked new bourbon.

Get a daily rugby union email

Our daily emails are only sent if there is content for the sport. You can subscribe to multiple daily emails; or get the daily Roar email with all our content in it.

We value privacy. More.