This is a satirical look at South african rugby, it is not intended to offend anyone, so please read it with the intent in which it was written.
So South Africa will soon have a new coach, well I damn well hope so, that is to say if Pieter de Villiers doesn’t call in some favours from his connections and remain in the post. The number of new ideas he has brought to the Springbok setup over the past four years amounts to zero. In fact you can deduct points for not even being able to effectively understand the existing plays, which is in fact zero as well.I definitely hope that Dick Muir doesn’t remain as the back line coach because he doesn’t have the ability to find a gap through an open gate. What he knows about back line play is dangerous to primary school rugby.
A special back line move for Dick Muir is the scrum half passing the ball to the fly half. He never had trigonometry at school, so angled running is taboo. An offload for Dick Muir is something you do in a bathroom after a indulging in a hot Indian curry the night before. In his eyes a defender beaten as akin to beating the opposition to a bloody pulp and then walking away feeling satisfied. An inside pass in his mind has something to do with a kidney stone.
Gary Gold seems to be as sweet as anything, but you try coaching a bunch of hard Afrikaner boys about the technicalities of forward play whilst sounding like you are asking for a date.
The fact is not all that is Gold, glitters. The collective rugby knowledge of these three musketeers are comparable to the three village idiots who has been in hiding in the mountains for far too long.So where am I going with this you might ask. Well I am pondering the future of South African rugby and even though I have no formal experience or training at coaching rugby at any level whatsoever, I am trying to think who in South Africa knows more about rugby than I do. The sad fact is the list is very short.
Ok, perhaps I am exaggerating slightly, but comparing our collective rugby knowledge with some other countries it is hardly surprising that since the start of professional rugby our success rate has not been what it could be.
You see the problem with South African rugby stems from grass roots level. Even in the days when I was at school the same principals applied. In those days (quite some time ago) the coaches of school rugby teams looked for the talented kids, those who showed some ingenuity when it came to rugby.
It would mainly be either those who were extremely strong and could lift a truck differential at the age of 10 (they would become forwards), or those who could see a gap and run fast (the back line players).
Since the professional era we as South Africans have come to the realisation that we now have to start coaching players. Now what have been inbred in our rugby mentality were mainly two things. You get the ball, if you are strong you run through or over anything in your way, if you are fast you run around the opponent. Nowhere in this genetic evolution has there been any conditioning of having to pass the ball, because if you pass the ball it means you must stop running, and hence we never have enough support players around the ball carrier.
The fact is South Africans are simple minded people, we don’t like things to be complicated. All this new age stuff like changing the laws of the breakdown and the crouch, touch, pause and engage is way above the average South African rugby player’s pay grade. Not to mention complicated back line moves too establish overlaps or gaps in defence. Rugby was never supposed to get that complicated. Why did players have to start going to gym, why did they have to get fitness and strength training.
We liked the way things were. We had these big farm boys running like runaway trucks and it worked, we had a few fast guys that could put Flash Gordon to shame, but no, other countries had to start training.
These days we have gotten to the point where players are over coached, they very rarely have the ability to adapt or adjust their mindset midway through a game.
We went to the world cup with a plan, yes admittedly it was a simple plan, but off and on it worked. In fact even though we weren’t the best in the world it still allowed us to be the third best ranked team in the world. What we did was this, win line outs, win scrums, compete at the breakdowns, run direct and when there were no fresh ideas, we would kick as high as possible. This meant the chase was on, put pressure, get a turn over and run again until you score or get a penalty. The penalty kicks were always taken.
So what happens, we go into a quarter final deciding we are going to play rugby. Lo and behold, we actually look good, we control the game, we control the territory.
But alas because the mindset is to play rather than to kick we don’t use the opportunities we get to kick for goals. NO, we want to run again. How difficult is it to say “Ah, this is an opportunity to run” or “Ah, here is an opportunity for points”.
You see what I mean, simple people. It seems to me, we need a manual override switch, something that can be switched on or off by remote button. But even then the odds are the coaching team will be in the same one track zone as the players.
So here we are, our new coach must have knowledge, someone who understands angles and stuff. He must be innovative. (problem there is has any South African ever invented anything worthwhile? Someone who can teach youngsters about creating a gap or overlap without having to be a freight train.
So much truth in this article. We rely on brilliant players to win the game for us and not on coaching players to think. It so often happens in matches that the Boks dominate on the field but not on the score board. The last QF was just an extreme example. Even if the ref had been better we would probably only have won by a small margin instead of the 20+ points we ought to have won by. I think Oz, especially, have our number on this. Australia is the best sports nation in the world. They have mastered the mental and psychological aspects – see for example how they manipulated us in cricket.
As far as the new coach is concerned, I’m afraid I see no hope there. There is no saviour on the horizon. Our only hope is if we have naturally gifted players in key positions. We need to play Lambie at flyhalf and stick with him. He has BMT, is very calm and unflappable and has now got enough experience on the highest stage. We have to live in hope and prayer because our coaching team is not going to contribute anything.
Sometimes I think we take the word coach too literally, perhaps we should be getting in ‘technicians’. At Springbok level, should we still be coaching players, surely they know how to play, thats what school/club/varsity coaches are doing. If we still need coaches at top level, then we have failed lower down the ladder (and that opens up a whole new can of worms and debate). As I said, I think in SA we take the term coach too literally and thus just teach what Biltongbek has alluded to in his article – big strong “smash ’em up” neanderthals, a couple of lightening bolt fast rabbits, and a kicking mule thrown in for good measure. It certainly make the basis for the SA style of game, and is something that we can still use with great effect, it is just that we need to raise the technical side of our play to run those line/gaps, to take the kicks when we need to, or just to pass when there is an overlap.
So lets change the advertised position Head Technician and use Specialists where they may be required. If nothing else, all these terms sound much larnier, and I am sure the opposition would be lulled in to a false idea that we are much cleverer than we actually are. (And perhaps the boys could then still sneak off and use the kudu’s on their farms as tackling bags instead of spending so much time in the gym)
Yip the problem starts at the early age levels. It’s a question of saffa mentality and any coach is going to struggle to change that. Take Snorre for example. When he came in, he had a completely different approach in mind. However the senior players wouldn’t buy into it and as they were WC champions, they carried a lot of weight. He was “forced” to bend to their views if he wanted their support as he did not have the confidence or public support to be his own man. Hope the new coach and public learn from what happened. Whoever the new coach is, we the public have to give the guy a chance and not attack him even before he’s played a game as we did to PdV.
And he just did not have the status to get rid of the old guys. Can you imagine if he had dropped Bakkies, Victor and FDP, and selected players that could implement his game plan. These guys would have either gone to Europe in a huff, or they would have toe’d the line.
@ Lion4ever:
Exactly and the rugby supporting public who are overwhelmingly white and who were already anti him because he was forced on us because of politics over their favourite son, Heynecke Meyer, would have gone completely bedonnerd.
Interesting article by Jake White – http://www.rugbyxv.co.za/coaches-corner/news/494-building-to-2015
In the article he alludes to some of your points, but takes it to a higher level than PdV, namely the board that appointed him – which doesn’t bode well for the future
@ Just For Kicks:
Exactly! Snorre was on a hiding to nothing from the word go.
@ Just For Kicks:
7
This is one of the best articles by Jake, it seems that his bitterness is gone.
The_Young_Turk wrote:
Agree, all went wrong with that statement by Hoskins.
Biltongbek , from your article.
“So what happens, we go into a quarter final deciding we are going to play rugby. Lo and behold, we actually look good, we control the game, we control the territory”
Wonder who decided we play this game plan in the Quarters? We were in position enough for 6 more drop goals, but under instructions we kept the ball and got nowhere. Someone said that we had 15 times 5 phases and Aus not once. We discussed the change of game plan here long ago and the majority felt that we should have change our game plan to that of the All Blacks and Australia.
Funny they in turn played our game plans almost 100% and to perfection.
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