Snor has tough calls to make in 2010

THE most intriguing revelation from the Springbok tour of Europe was not Victor Matfield’s claim that the Irish players understand Afrikaans, but that their forwards coach, Gert Smal, still knew the Springbok lineout calls from when he last worked with them.

Simnikiwe Xabanisa, Sunday Times

If that’s the case, it means the calls haven’t changed in two years.

There are various ways of looking at this: the Boks have either been magnificent in their execution of that aspect of the game, or they have been incredibly complacent as the best lineout team in the world for the past five years.

The fact that the Irish were the first team to comprehensively outplay them in the lineout in all that time goes a long way towards confirming the former.

But the Boks’ attitude to the lineout is indicative of their approach to their game as a whole. Through their mantra of “more of the same, but with better execution”, the Boks have developed one thing over the past couple of years – they’ve perfectly tailored their game plan to their strengths.

Boks fall short

But if the results from Europe taught us anything, it is that they fall short of being one of the all-time great sides like the All Blacks of the late 1980s, Bob Dwyer’s Wallabies, and Clive Woodward’s 2003 World Cup winners.

What those teams had in common was an ability to win games they had no right winning.

The main obstacle to the Boks being put in that bracket is their inability to change things once plan a goes bust. Consequently, reinventing themselves, and not fatigue, should be the buzz word for the world champions if they are to successfully defend the Webb Ellis Trophy in New Zealand.

France and Ireland have shown that if a team can work themselves into the requisite frenzy to front up to the Boks’ famed physicality and contest the barrage of kicks that come with playing them well, they can be beaten.

Peter’s fork in the road

Peter de Villiers is now confronted with a fork in the road, where he either forges ahead with the game plan he originally wanted the Boks to play at the beginning of his tenure, or he tinkers slightly with a game the opposition have two years to successfully outsmart by the World Cup.

If he opts for change, two of the key decisions that need to be made are whether he goes back on his plan to turn Ruan Pienaar into a flyhalf and Smit into a tighthead.

The problem with the Pienaar change is the incumbent flyhalf, Morne Steyn, who has had a sensational debut year as an international.

Steyn fits in perfectly with the current Bok plan because his accurate goal-kicking is the means by which they are guaranteed to cash in on a pressure-based game.

Playing Pienaar demands a change of plan altogether, not to mention a flyhalf whose goal-kicking they can’t rely on.

John Smit

Moving Smit back to hooker presents him with the obvious problem of a No1 who’s actually not the No1, but plays because he’s the captain.

De Villiers should also view the news that Fourie du Preez wants to carry on playing until after the attempted World Cup defence with a degree of caution.

The Bok coach is getting more and more players with nothing left to win on the 2011 bus. While they’re all pedigreed, the only way he’ll know if they will be mere passengers is after the World Cup.

And while he’s at it, De Villiers would do well to re-examine the shared responsibility of guiding the team between the coaching staff and the senior players. A lot of the senior players have cited having their families along as a great perk of being coached by De Villiers, but there’s a good reason rugby tours in the professional era are considered work, not paid holidays.

Put it this way, the All Blacks didn’t have the women and children along in Europe, and they carried all before them. It’s unfair to say this of a man who has done as well as he has in his first two years in charge, but next year is all about hard decisions for De Villiers.