- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
If you kept an eye on the tape of the Springboks (18) vs All Blacks (5) Test without the sound or scoreboard, you would have presumed that the team in black won the match comfortably.
They made break after break, went across the line twice (once wrongly over-ruled by the television referee) and generally held their opponents comfortably when they tried occasional attacks with the ball in hand.
In fact the Springboks won as comfortably as they have for many years.
They kicked five penalties and a field goal, with one other easy field goal attempt missed. They won the penalty count at the breakdown 11-7 and this was the crucial aspect in their victory.
The All Blacks made the truly stupid mistake of trying to make play from kicks inside their own half.
What happened, especially early on before the Springbok giants tired and started taking breathers after every play, was that the big pile-in lay all over the ball, and the supreme pilferer (or ‘fetcher’ as the South Africans call him) Heinrich Brussow snaffled up turnover after turnover, and won a number of penalties.
I found it hard to believe that the All Black coaches were so poor in their tactics. But Colin Slade, who had a bad game with his boot both kicking for goal and in general play, seemed to be playing to instructions.
These instructions were to kick from inside his own 22, either chip kicks or up-and-unders. There were few All Black chasers for these kicks. And the Springboks were gifted field position and the chance to kick penalties galore.
Here is a fearless prediction. If the All Blacks play these tactics against the Springboks in a World Cup semi-final, they’ll go under. And this prediction applies even if Dan Carter and Richie McCaw are in the starting XV.
Plenty of Wallaby supporters have complained about Robbie Deans’ coaching and selection over the years.
But, against the Springboks last Saturday night he had the Wallabies playing exactly the right tactics. You keep the ball in hand for as long as possible, and when you kick you force the Springboks to play out of their 22.
They can only score points with intercept tries, occasionally, and from penalties and field goals. From inside their own 22 they have no hope and no inclination to try and open things up.
If Graham Henry has learnt this elementary truth, then the Springboks have done the All Blacks a favour.
It will be interesting to see if they adopt similar short kicking tactics on Saturday against the Wallabies.
The other fascinating aspect of the game is the way that Brussow just cleaned out the All Black loose forwards. The All Black selectors show every sign of not having a fetcher as back-up to McCaw, rather like the Wallabies with David Pocock.
The theory, one presumes, is that both these players will play out all 80 minutes of the big matches. If they get injured then, and again this is a presumption, then a genuine fetcher will be brought in.
The majority of the All Blacks were playing their first game in months. They looked rusty. They could not finish off obvious movements for tries when the line was begging to be crossed. They did their own causes little good.
Slade made about three schoolboy mistakes and it was noticeable that the All Blacks looked much better when Piri Weepu came on as the number 10. The All Black scrum, too, didn’t look as powerful as it is when Brad Thorne is there. It conceded a tight-head and a couple of penalties.
The Springboks will be elated with the victory. What it demonstrated to them, and to the rest of the world, is that if they can force penalties and kick them, they can defeat any team in the world with their kicking and negative, scrambling, intercept game.
Against the Wallabies, for instance, the result may well have been different if Morne Steyn (five out of five penalties) had been playing. The Springboks missed a couple of kickable penalties and didn’t even attempt a couple of easy shots.
This won’t happen in the World Cup.
And what about doing the Wallabies a favour, too. They showed that the short kicking game of the All Blacks is a terrible liability against a side that will contest the ruck and maul, in an effort to win penalties.
Pocock is the match of Brussow in this, and it will be interesting to see if Carter is as profligate with possession as Slade was.
The Wallabies now have a chance of winning their first silverware in years, if they defeat the All Blacks at Brisbane. This will give the team and the new captain a huge fillip, if it happens, going into the World Cup tournament.
For the All Blacks, they disregarded W.C. Fields’ maxim of never giving a sucker an even break, and could live to regret their foolishness.