A magum opus of a Springbok annus horribilis

In the aftershocks of Australia’s defeat of the Springboks on Saturday night, South African rugby supporters have wasted no time in engaging with each other on social media.

They are trying to make sense of just how badly the bottom has fallen out of South African rugby of late. The common threads of the comments in these posts is in relation to just how badly ‘transformation quotas’ have affected our rugby. However in truth the malaise has been there for a long time.

What we have been seeing from the Springboks for some time now is a carcass of a once proud animal which has been rotting from the inside out.

While transformation and hidden political agendas have certainly played their role, what has actually taken place over the last few years is a perfect storm of events.

These have drawn together to see Springboks rugby at what is clearly its lowest ebb. This articles attempts to make sense of what has brought exposed Springboks rugby so brutally.

The Jake White effect
Jake White’s four-year tenure at the helm was most notably remembered for two key events – the Tri-Nations Trophy in 2004 and the World Cup of 2007.

The legacy of that is South African coaches appear to have aspired to Jake White’s playing style ever since. Now, 12 years after his initial successes, we are seeing the same blueprint of his tactics in every game that the Springboks play.

One can argue that this is the same style of play the Springboks have doggedly stuck through the de Villiers and Meyer eras and now it seems that Allister Coetzee is towing the company line by instructing his Halves to kick possession away whenever good ball comes their way.

White’s style of game has had its fleeting successes but it has left a damaging legacy on how our players are coached. One has to think that preparing a game against the Springboks must be tactically one of the easiest challenges for an international rugby coach.

The talent drain
Hardly a week goes by without an announcement of a talented South African rugby player being lured to play abroad and for good reason too.

If one considers that the rand is worth 1/16th of the euro, it makes complete sense for a young player to seek opportunities elsewhere. During the latest edition of the Craven Week in 2016, French scouts approached 20 of the country’s most promising school rugby stars with contracts which would take their fellow school boys many years of hard study and corporate ladder climbing to achieve.

The end result is that the structural pyramid that makes up South African rugby is consistently shorn of talent. Year after year players are being pushed into teams when they are not ready to be there.

One has to wonder whether in the history of our sport, so many players from one country have moved so swiftly en masse to other countries to play. The effect has been disastrous and to expect a national coach to cohesively work with talent plucked from different parts of the globe at such short intervals is never bound to happen.

South African rugby administration
One has to only click on the SARU Wikipedia page to gain an impression of the tumultuous organisation that runs rugby in South Africa.

Latterly, reports of fraud and maladministration have peppered the broadsheets but it the structure of the organisation that lends itself to the type power struggles that have continued since Louis Luyt’s exit.

Interestingly, it appears that SARU have yet to be able to even secure a long-time jersey sponsor and one has to wonder why a major sports brand like the Springboks only landed a short-term sponsor days before the Irish Test series.

In short, South African rugby is missing a cohesive group of professionals to run it.

Political interference and transformation
In its quest to create a sport that is broadly representative of South African society, immense pressure has been placed on South African sporting codes to meet racial quotas to the extent of losing funding and support from government for the hosting of events.

No other nation has such pressures placed from within on their sports. While the intention of such a policy to get rugby to be played by all in the country is a noble one, its effect in reaching this goal cannot go unchallenged.

Players would have experienced quota policies from their earliest days on schoolboy rugby fields and whether they are chosen for Craven Week, University, Provincial or National teams is heavily influenced still on the colour of their skin.

For the Kevin Pietersen and Clyde Rathbones of South Africa, the decision to move to play for another country can be made at an early stage of a career. After all, why should one dedicate one’s best years when merit is not the deciding factor for representation?

Most South Africans would feel much more positive about transformation had the government been prepared to contribute meaningfully to the process. However when the government cannot even deliver textbooks to school children, how can they really be expected to provide school boys with grassed playing fields?

Abysmal coaching
South African supporters have decried the standards of coaching in South Africa for years and there is no surprise that in the times that overseas coaches have taken over the reigns of local teams, standards have improved.

One merely has to think of Laurie Mains and John Mitchell with the Cats or John Plumtree with the Sharks and we fondly remember the complete turnaround that Eddie Jones brought to the Springboks in 2007.

In April 2016, the SARU media release announced ‘a vastly experienced team management to assist new Springbok head coach Allister Coetzee with the core duties in preparing the team for the next four years’.

Coetzee had no success in Super Rugby and his teams will not be remembered for the entertaining brand of rugby or the new style of play that they introduced to the game. Mzwandile Stick was a Sevens player who coached the Eastern Province under 19 team and then was backline coach to the awful Kings Super Rugby Team prior to his appointment.

Bath evidently decided that Todd Blackadder was a better candidate for them than Johan van Graan who has also never taken the helm of a Super Rugby team. One has to simply compare what South Africa has to the coaching spoils of New Zealand and the salaries that other nations can offer to keep their coaching talent at home.

So while Springbok rugby will in all likelihood never regain its lofty heights of the past and the team will slip in rankings to perhaps even being outside of the top-ten soon, hope still springs eternal.

More and more South African blacks are taking to the sport and the success of the sevens team shows that we have in our midst players with enormous guile, speed and outrageous skills.

Perhaps all it takes is an element of honesty from those that run the sport in our country.