First choice centres who don’t penetrate defensive systems, locks and loose forwards that camp in the backline and a national captain who can’t even make his union’s starting line-up – these are but some of the nightmares that should keep Peter de Villiers up at nights. However, the national coach seems to be more than satisfied with the state of S.A. Rugby and says he is sleeping like a baby. A baby ostrich, with his head firmly buried under ground possibly, seeing as things are not where they have to be with a World Cup tournament less than 65 days away!

The Stormers’ crushing defeat at the hands of the battered and bruised Crusaders in Cape Town last Saturday did little else except to underline the desperate state of the level of the game in the Republic. Jean de Villiers and Jacque Fourie (widely regarded as the centre pairing for the RWC) had a horrid time of it; between trying to restrict Sonny Bill Williams, fighting their own forwards for possession in the backline and trying to look for some inkling of direction from Peter Grant!

One should think that scrumming, securing your possession in the line outs and clearing the rucks would be top priority for big, strong, experienced forwards, but one would be sorely mistaken. In Stormer country Andries Bekker, Schalk Burger, Nick Koster and the ever-present duo of Brok Harris and Wickus Blaaw choose rather to set up permanent residence between the first receivers and the centres. Hereby slowing the ball down to the point where any attempt at breaking the line is diminished completely. To make matters worse, when these new-found backline players are tackled, they’re smashed backwards and more often than not, driven off the ball. The loose- forwards who then actually need to hit the rucks at pace and drive the poaching players off the ball, cannot do so because they are in fact the people in possession of the ball, powerless at the bottom of the ruck.

Levelling the Stormers loss at the heads of the players is not entirely correct though. These guys play their hearts out, albeit incorrectly and with little effect, yet they play the way they’re coached. The captain(s) of this ship (Allister and company) need to take responsibility for their failure to act on the evidence of poor performances that have been building up through the seasons. Not much chance of expecting any other response from them than “we believe in the structures and the systems in place”, closely followed by my personal favourite “we think we’re on the right track”. Carrying on like nothing is wrong and very little has to change, is not only counter-productive, it creates a feeling of false confidence, which eventually leads to even more complacency.

A complete overall of the structures and personnel in place (within S.A. Rugby) is not realistic when taking the limited time frame into account. The only course of action is to stick with the experienced players, but allow for a complete paradigm shift in terms of the game plan. Essentially this would simply constitute a move back to the basics, where the scrum is anchored properly, the rucks are cleared with purpose and the backs attack the gain line with the aid of quick and crisp service. It’s almost too simple and that is why it would probably never be the way forward.

There is nothing wrong with a conservative approach – it’s just that De Villiers wants to rely too much upon capitalising on the opponents mistakes. The unfortunate by-product of this line-of-thinking, is that there is little or no focus on the creating of scoring opportunities. This leaves the gap wide open for guys like Frans Steyn and Lambie to now come into play. They’re spoken of as players who can turn a game and possess that “x-factor”, but the game plan does not lend itself to support their unique abilities. They either fall by the way side or they make elementary mistakes in their quest to pull a rabbit from PDivvy’s old top hat!

If the people in charge of securing a South African 2011 RWC success want to stick to an age-old mantra, it can only be GO BACK TO BASICS, because the kick-and-chase methodology has run its course!!

Anfred Waldeck

Pic: pakiscorner.com