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All Blacks coach, Graham Henry. AAP Images
The fact that Morne Steyn scored all South Africa’s points in their emphatic 31 – 19 victory over New Zealand at Durban, and the way he scored them, said everything that needs to be stated about the way the Springboks and the All Blacks played in this Test.
Steyn kicked 8 penalties, scored a try, kicked a conversion and hit the uprights high up on a long range drop goal attempt. Bryan Habana, Jacque Fourie and J.P.Piersen, the outside Sprinboks backs hardly touched the ball from backline play and never when they were in a position to make a run at the tryline.
The Springboks had a strongish scrum, a brilliant lineout (which upset the All Blacks throw all day and lost only one of their own throws), a strong defensive line which played flat bordering on off-side and loitered back into position after All Blacks breaks, an assertive, hard-shouldered contact zone system, and an excellent kick-and-chase game with the catcher often thumped to the ground to create mistakes.
This restricted game plan in boxing terms can be described as counter-punching. The Springboks do not try to make the play. They play off mistakes, mainly by forcing penalties and the occasion try from a forced error.
In the case of Steyn’s try the error was that of the error-prone (against the All Blacks) referee Nigel Owens who allowed Fourie du Preez to snatch the ball from under Richie McCaw’s feet as he was bound to the scrum. Ironically just minutes before Owens had penalised and yellow-carded Isaac Ross for kicking the ball away from under the feet of an unbound Morne du Plessis, a turning point penalty in the Test.
However, the All Blacks, as they did at Cardiff in 2007 in the RWC quarter-final against France, at Sydney last year against the Wallabies and again on Saturday night, created their own dismal fate. They played exactly the right tactics to hand the victory over to a confident Springboks side that, as in the 2007 RWC tournament, did not have to play any rugby, aside from solid set pieces, strong defence and good goal-kicking to win the Test.
The way to beat this essentially negative style of rugby is to play the game inside the Springboks half so that they can’t score tries from mistakes or kick penalties. Once the Springboks are forced to play some rugby to get momentum into their game they are out of their comfort zone and make mistakes.
But they are very comfortable playing in the opposition half, running their kicks back and forcing penalties.
Anyone with a modicum of rugby nous should be able to work out that the way to beat the Springboks is to make them make their tackles and their runs from deep inside their own territory. Anyone, that is, except the All Blacks coaching staff.
The pattern of the Test and its outcome with a Springboks victory was set in the opening minutes of the Test when Jimmy Cowan twice tried to put in chip kicks over the maul from near his own tryline. This was crazy play, which however was obviously part of the game plan. Then Stephen Donald tried to do an up and under from inside his own 22, with no All Blacks chasers.
This was the stupid tactic used by the Chiefs when they were massacred by the Bulls in the Super 14 final. Clearly the lesson of that match was not learnt by Donald, a poor kicker and an even worse passer of the ball, or the All Blacks coaching staff.
The NZRU announced some weeks ago that Graham Henry has been re-appointed to the position of All Blacks coach. Whether this is set in stone for the 2011 RWC is not entirely clear. But there are mutterings in New Zealand, despite his terrific record with the All Blacks of an 86 per cent winning record, that he should be dumped.
NZ Rugby Heaven carries a report of the Test, with the statistics of South Africa’s 72 per cent possession and 15 minutes in the All Blacks 22 and New Zealand’s 21 handling errors and only 4 minutes inside the Springboks 22, with the headline: ‘More of the same rubbish from All Blacks.’
Richard Loe in his NZ Herald column opens up the issue of whether Henry should be replaced. The column was written before the Test and with the presumption that the All Blacks would lose: ‘All Black coaches need to step up or walk away.’
But if Henry stands down (unlikely), or is pushed (unlikely but not impossible), then Steve Hansen will probably take over. As Hansen is supposed to be in charge of the forwards and presides over a lineout that didn’t even jump against the Springboks at Bloemfontein, there is not a great a great deal of enthusiasm in New Zealand for this sort of a change.
Loe, a hard man All Blacks prop (ask Paul Carozza’s nose), nominates another All Black front rower for Henry’s job, Warren Gatland, the current coach of Wales.
Is Gatland available? Is he the answer? Or was the All Blacks best coaching option killed off when Robbie Deans was stabbed in the back by the NZRU board?