Back in August, I described how Allister Coetzee’s crop of new Springboks had failed to grasp what if anything their new head coach was teaching them.
After watching their fairly poor June series against Ireland, and their first Rugby Championship match against Argentina, I was struggling to identify what Coetzee was bringing to his new role, and why he was the man chosen to replace Heyneke Meyer and his “prehistoric” tactics.
After a full RC, I am still at a loss, but now I know why. It is because what ‘Toetie’ is offering South African rugby is nothing different than we saw from Meyer.
Same old, just with new faces.
Hopefully for Boks fans, a record loss of 57 points to 15 against historic rivals New Zealand will be the wake up call required for the SARU to really push the issue with their new head coach that there is something seriously going wrong in the national team setup, and it needs to be remedied.
Many will point to the newly allotted racial quotas for South African national teams as a superfluous stumbling block that is anti-sport and sporting values in the first place.
Whatever your opinion on the matter, South Africa were bad against the All Blacks. Really bad.
They were bad against Argentina, bad against Ireland, and not a whole lot better against Australia, and it’s not possible to place the blame squarely on the coloured players.
Perhaps there is only one coloured member of the team who doesn’t need to be there, and he’s sitting in the coaches’ box.
Harking back to the demolition job against the ABs, easily the most anticipated rugby match in South Africa every year, and this was the match where it became painfully clear the little difference Coetzee has made to his predecessor.
Whichever way Springboks fans wish to view it, mauls, rucks and set piece statistics were almost identical. No team gained any clear edge, with the Boks prevailing in some categories, and NZ in others.
Outside of this typical strength of South African rugby, a feature of Meyer’s game also, the Springboks were beaten six ways from Sunday across the park.
Some of the more damning statistics include 754 metres to 148, 162 carries to 56, 40 defenders beaten to 3, 24 clean breaks to 3 and 40 missed tackles to 3.
Under Coetzee, the Boks remain committed to unattractive rugby based on kicking and defence.
Labeled “conservative” by Coetzee supporters, the same style was described as “prehistoric” to remove Meyer from his post after last year’s World Cup.
If this style had worn out its’ welcome in 2015, it is well and truly being pushed out the door in 2016, and perhaps Coetzee and his staff should go with it.
On last week’s Rugby365 podcast, hosts Jan de Koning and Tauriq Ebrahim were tentative of Coetzee’s style, wondering if it and he were the long-term solution to the long-term problems in South African rugby.
Against a poor Wallabies side, the Springboks somehow managed to get over the line, despite a statistical dominance by the Aussies, particularly in attack (10 clean breaks, 21 beaten defenders).
De Koning and Ebrahim pondered that, even though Australia were not clinical enough to put the Boks away, New Zealand certainly would be, and they were right, with a capital r.
But even the Wallabies were smart enough to realise that, for a team relying on their defence for a big part of their game plan, South Africa’s 10-12 channel is far from rock solid, and the problems in defence expand from there.
If the Springboks are going to bank their victories on their kicking game and defence, both need to be elite, and right now, that is not the case at all.
Moreover, when Allister Coetzee was appointed at the start of the year, it was for reasons stipulating mainly towards Heyneke Meyer’s outdated game plan.
A season later, and we have not seen any changes made by Coetzee. Only to the bodies in the jerseys, and that is far from good enough.
