He may have been given too much leeway by the referee, but the Boks need to take a lesson out of the Scottish open side flank Alisdair Strokosch book says Tank Lanning in his eNCA.com column.
This time last week, we were all cock a hoop re a potential “New Bok dawn” … Yet a mere seven days later the Italian side that the Boks looked very good against for forty minutes has taken a proper hammering from Samoa, and the Boks have needed a questionable yellow card to get past a side fuelled by the passion of “Flower of Scotland” …
Talk about perspective!
And the book of clichés rears it’s ugly head … “Seven days is a long time in rugby” … “You are only as good as your last game” … But the one that strikes a chord for me is that old chestnut: “You need to earn the right to go wide”, with the Boks, perhaps believing the smoke that the likes of this columnist blew up their arses last week, trying too much, too soon, and thus playing helter skelter rugby for the first fifty minutes or so.
And it happens often to teams up against opposition deemed inferior. Believing the game to be won before taking the field, the side starts the game by throwing the ball around, expecting the gaps to just open up.
The problem, of course, was that someone forgot to let the Scots know the script, and instead of wilting meekly in the face of the mighty Boks, they chose to front up with passion, guts, brutal in your face defence, and an open side flanker willing to live on the edge of the legal envelope and take a battering to the body for his team.
Alisdair Strokosch ruled the roost at Mbombela stadium. Bok replacement flank Siya Kolisi, as good as he was in open play in a fairytale Bok debut, and Marcell Coetzee had nothing on Strokosch, and as such, the Boks were bossed at the breakdown. All good open-siders live on the envelope of legality, and many might argue that the shaven haired Scot with a black belt in karate was given too much leeway by referee Romain Poite. But against the likes of the All Blacks and the Aussies, this will be the norm, and the Boks will need to adapt or die …
The best way to take an open-sider out the game is to take away their playground, that being the breakdown. This through having a dominant scrum that guarantees you a right shoulder on attack and a left shoulder on defence, so your open-sider has the shortest line to the breakdown, through cleaning out aggressively, timeously and effectively at the ruck, thus removing said Strokosch like thorn, and through meeting fire with fire with your own open-sider.
The Boks have an OK scrum (with a single tighthead prop almost out on his feet given that the next in line has not even been given time on the bench), a fairly poor clean out system given the want for the Bok forwards to carry rather than clean, and no out and out open-sider. It is no wonder they were bossed at the breakdown.
Yes, the Boks were missing both Francois Louw and Arno Botha on Saturday, but surely your backup should see you able to replace like with like? Bismarck du Plessis and Duane Vermeulen also play more to the ball than Adriaan Strauss and Pierre Spies, and make a big difference at the breakdown, but again, surely you select (or coach) accordingly?
How Heinrich Brussow and Philip van der Walt have not had a look in, and how Lourens Adriaanse, selected ahead of the inform Wiehahn Herbst as backup tighthead prop, has been left to carry the bags, is beyond me.
The bottom line, though, is that while it is fantastic to see the Boks adding an attacking element to their game, and long may that continue, it can only come into play after earning the right to use it by subduing the opposition up front first.
Very good and to the point article.