Brendan Venter

Having suffered back-to-back away defeats – albeit by narrow margins – the Springboks’ chances of winning the Rugby Championship are now balanced on a knife’s edge.

While home ground advantage should offer the Springboks some solace, from personal experience, pressure is magnified on home soil.

The expectation is that the Springboks should beat the Wallabies comfortably at Newlands on Saturday, and I feel that’s a horrible position for a team to find itself in.

SuperSport

Under the mentorship of Ewen McKenzie, Australia pose a very different challenge. They have clearly drawn the conclusion that an attacking strategy rather than a defensive mindset is what sets them apart from the rest, due to the fact that their greatest strength lies within their back division.

The Springboks therefore have to exploit the above game philosophy and would be naïve not to play the visitors into the corners. With Australia set to field a 9-10-15 axis of Nick Phipps, Bernard Foley and Israel Folau, the reality is that they couldn’t play a kicking game even if they wanted to. The aforementioned players, while potent on attack, just don’t kick the ball well enough out of hand.

Recent statistics suggest that the Wallabies favour a ball-in-hand approach, and therefore the Springboks must do the complete opposite and place focus on playing the right areas of the field.

While statistics are useful, they are like bikinis in that they reveal a lot but not everything. The reality is that if you enjoy 70 per cent territory – like the All Blacks did against the Springboks in Wellington – you don’t need to kick the ball more. As such, a more objective statistic would be: how many times the ball is kicked into in the grey area – between your 22 and the half-way line, because very few teams actually kick the ball in the opposition half.

A team’s intent is mostly judged by whether they run the ball between their 22 and the half-way line. Within their own 22, almost all teams kick the ball, whereas in the opposition half almost all teams run the ball. Thus, it’s what happens from your 22 to the half way-line that matters most.

The big debate ahead of Saturday’s showdown in Cape Town revolves around whether the Springboks are in possession of the right playing personnel to employ a territory-driven game plan.

If the Springboks, for argument’s sake, boasted a 9-10-15 axis of Fourie du Preez, Morne Steyn and Zane Kirchner, I believe they would be perfectly suited to play a field position-based game strategy.

Yet a triumvirate of Francois Hougaard, Handré Pollard and Willie le Roux are not. Thus the challenge is to understand that the way to beat Australia is to attack their set-piece, to be physical up front and to make them return kicks, because those are their primary points of weakness.

While I’m not suggesting that a territory-driven, forward-dominated approach should be a generalised game strategy for the Springboks, as a professional coach you have to analyse your team, the makeup of the opposition and then ask yourself what tactics will work for that week.

If we examine the current playing personnel at the Springboks’ disposal, the question is: Can the Boks adapt their game strategy to suit the particular match and opponent?

A lot has been said and written about aimless kicking. I believe there’s merit in that argument, because players that kick precisely normally get the decision when to kick spot on as well. It’s not just that they execute well but the decision when to kick is also a strength of theirs.

Heyneke Meyer’s men know that they should attack Australia at set-piece, defend their dangerous runners and play for territory but the ultimate question is: Do we have the makeup to do that?