Heyneke Meyer should yank his head out of the sand

Heyneke Meyer has dug himself into a hole I can’t see him easily escaping from, and I won’t be surprised if the Springbok coach buries his head in the sand after the debacle against Ireland at the Aviva stadium.

He appears to have done that by blaming our players’ lack of character, the wet ball on a “tricky” surface, talking up being outplayed by a “great” Ireland side, which had beaten the All Blacks, and taking an implicit dig at the referee.

For starters, this was not a great Ireland team. It was one racked by injuries and featured a below-par front row that the Springboks pushed around with ease. Instead of criticising the players, Meyer should remember that when you point a finger, three point back at you. He’s the boss and the man who decides how the team practises and plays.

He should yank his head out of the sand and confront our problems, one of which has been his penchant for digging up bodies from South Africa’s World Cup-winning squad of 2007. Players such as captain Jean de Villiers, Gurthro Steenkamp, Ruan Pienaar, Morne Steyn, Jannie du Plessis, Bakkies Botha, Schalk Burger and even 37-year-old Victor Matfield are not the players they used to be and should have been given a well-earned rest in Boot Hill.

Rather than talking up Ireland, he should be concerned about our lack of ball skills and dubious game-plan decisions in the 29-15 defeat. The wet ball and the referee were not the problems. He should wonder why Ireland gave us a hiding.

In his first squad, Meyer chose all of 11 players from the one when South Africa won the rugby showpiece. New Zealand have kept five players from that tournament and Australia only two.

In our squad back then, the average age was over 31 and it resembled a pensioner’s paradise. The average has now dropped to about 28, which is similar to other line-ups. However, we persist with Matfield and the like. I admit that the 37-year-old still soars like an eagle in the lineouts and has an octopus-like grip on the ball. But he has lost pace in general play and keeping him solely for his lineout skills is an open question.

Why the shortage of younger players? The truth is that we simply don’t have enough youngsters with sufficient experience because we haven’t been bringing them through. You only get experience by being given significant game time and that hasn’t happened. The Springboks have held on to the same team for far too long. We should have blooded the younger players during our Northern Hemisphere tour two years ago. We are now paying the price.

Pat Lambie is a case in point: just 24 years old, the skilful flyhalf has spent most of his time warming his backside on the bench. Here is a player blessed with talent who should have been developed. Lambie, however, has not fitted into Meyer’s big-is-better, brawn-not-brains mantra.

Meyer has persisted with Handre Pollard, another young talented player, at outside half. Only 20 years old, Pollard has great potential, but why, with only a handful of Test caps, has he been preferred to Lambie, who has more than 30? Because he is bigger, not necessarily better.

And why is Morne Steyn still in the squad? He was the star in 2011 and scored the most points by an individual. But the game has changed since then and Steyn, despite his unerring boot, is not the force he once was. Meyer appears to have a touch of Blue Bull fever with some of his selections.

We now have only a handful of Tests before next year’s World Cup battle, so it is far too late to start making major changes. Meyer must realise that for the Springboks to improve, he must change his view. If perfection is the aim, change is vital. The changes don’t have to be earth-shattering. There is time to hone the team’s overall skills by the time the World Cup arrives.

I am well aware that we recently beat the All Blacks courtesy of a TV-replay inspired penalty that Lambie booted over at the last minute and gave South Africa a two-point victory. All credit to Meyer and the Springboks for winning 27-25 and ending the New Zealanders’ unbeaten record.

Fans and critics were over the moon and howling with delight. Pollard was rated as the greatest flyhalf on the planet and eighth-man Duane Vermeulen the best back-rower. The world was at our feet and there was talk we could even knock the All Blacks off their world number one perch.

And then came Ireland on what Meyer described as a tricky surface. South African commentators at the match, however, said the surface had dried out and praised the ground’s drainage system. In any event, it was the same for both teams.

I feel that it was a mistake not to take points early with a shot at the posts. We opted for a lineout instead and an unsurprising driving maul. It did pay off once with a try but Ireland defended effectively against the maul on other occasions. We came short, too, when we did run the ball.

Francois Hougaard was awful and nervous at the base of the scrum, Pollard was ineffective and indecisive at pivot, De Villiers and centre partner Jan Serfontein ran at their usual predictable, metronomic pace while Bryan Habana, often a potent force, hardly saw the ball. Cornal Hendricks, on the other wing, was poor on defence. At fullback, Willie le Roux gave his usual show-and-go performance, but ran sideways too often and fumbled the ball.

Our backs appeared to believe that power is the name of the game. Run full-tilt at the opposition, drop in the tackle and recycle the ball. How about more canny off-loads, something that the All Blacks are masters at? You could probably write our game plan on the back of a cigarette box.

For those who complain about French referee Romaine Poite, former Springbok coach Nick Mallet says he was right in giving Adriaan Strauss a yellow card.

“People will complain about Adriaan Strauss getting sent off, but you know that you cannot take a guy in the air. He got the yellow card he deserved,” he said.

“The success of our performance against England is going to depend on good transformation from our scrum to our backline and that comes through the scrumhalf.

“Our wingers hardly got the ball, and Habana spent a lot of time trying to contest the ball on the ground. The try we scored at the end of the game showed what we can do if we put the ball through the hands.”

As the crunch against England at Twickenham looms, Meyer should heed what a sage once said: “We are products of the past, but we don’t have to be held prisoners by it”.

It is true that the Springboks have opted for a more balanced game plan. Kick and chase will always be part of our armoury, and we are not alone in relying on the boot. The trouble is that we have only recently expanded on the way we play and we don’t have near the skills of other teams who have been polishing them for years.

We did out-scrum a mediocre Ireland outfit, racked by injuries, and prop Du Plessis emerged with distinction. But do not think that our front row will have it that easy against England. They will be far tougher in the scrums and good in the set pieces. If we don’t dominate up front, we will have to take our chances and to do that we need better ball skills.

As usual, Meyer refrained from directly blaming the referee, but did so by implication in his inimitable style.

“The referee is always right, we’re not allowed to say otherwise,” he said.

“We have to adapt to different styles of game. You can’t play Championship (southern hemisphere championship) rugby in the ones we had today and we haven’t really played well in the wet ball conditions like that all year.”

Too true, but this is not the first time his squad has played in Europe. Meyer and his backroom boys can’t feign ignorance about overseas conditions.

Ireland coach Joe Schmidt, a New Zealander, however, had a good look at the way we play and came up with a game plan that left Meyer and his backroom boys clutching their heads in consternation.

Do the old-timers deserve the boot? I can’t see De Villiers being dropped so close to the World Cup. For the others, it’s time for them to go before it’s too late.

The thought reminds me of a line from a western movie, The Unforgiven. The sheriff, played by Gene Hackman, lying on his back on the floor, says, “I don’t deserve this”.

His avenger, played by Clint Eastwood, gun pointed at Hackman’s head, replies, “Deserve has nothing to do with it,” and pulls the trigger.