Springboks under pressure and losing the plot

By MIKE GREENAWAY

DURBAN - A discernible trend has evolved over the past three years of South African performances in the Tri-Nations.

The All Blacks hammer the Boks in New Zealand and then scrape a victory in the Republic; the Boks then salvage a vestige of honour by beating the Wallabies in South Africa before succumbing in Australia.

Played four, lost three, won one. That is the trend. Will it change this year?

Well, the mood among South African fans says it will - but not for the better.

No South African team has ever lost all four matches, but nobody here is betting against the Springboks making yet another unfortunate entry into the history books.

South Africans are getting used to their team making history for all the wrong reasons.

If this sounds overwhelmingly pessimistic, then you have not had to endure the reality of South African performances in the Super 12 followed by the agony of the "warm-up" tests against Scotland and Argentina.

The Springboks were utterly hopeless in the afore-mentioned tests and should have lost two of them, being saved only by Louis Koen's unerring boot.

One has to feel a degree of sympathy for the selection policy that Rudolf Straeuli was forced to adopt over the past month.

When your four Super 12 teams finish in the bottom half of the table, the result is that few players have played their way into a test starting line-up, which is why Straeuli has held glorified trials since the end of the Super 12 - two tests against Scotland, one against the Pumas and two South Africa A games.

About 50 players saw service in those five matches and at the end of it all, the bottom line is that Straeuli is exactly where he started at the beginning of the year. His players are as poor today as they were six weeks ago, and as they were during the Super 12.

A South African A side containing 12 test players beat mighty Namibia 24-9.

Which brings us to the Tri-Nations and the squad announced by Straeuli for the opening match against Australia at Newlands.

There is something distinctly medieval about the line-up taking shape, and Eddie Jones is not going to have sleepless nights trying to work out the Boks' pattern.

The pack will contain at least five Bulls, the team who came sixth in the Super 12, for goodness sake, and probably two Cats, the side who came last.

Behind them will be the Bulls pair of Koen and Joost van der Westhuizen, the dogged veteran whose pass is getting slower by the season, not that it was ever crisp.

Koen's brief will be simple - kick it to the corners and then goal every penalty the beefy pack manages to grind out of the Wallabies.

The identity of the players outside of Koen does not really matter - they are not going to see that much of the ball.

It is interesting to note, though, that at the time of writing, the player pencilled in at left wing was none other than the talentless Thinus Delport, who was enticed back to South Africa from Gloucester, where he had gone when he could not get a game in the Republic because his form was so poor.

The selection of Delport and forgotten centre DeWet Barry, and the omission of an in-form lock such as AJ Venter, are signs that Straeuli is feeling the pressure - and losing the plot.

By captain Corne Krige's own admission, his team are short on confidence, short on playing time (the lineup for the opening test is very different to the one that played the Pumas) and are playing at "40 per cent" of their capability.

That is hardly a solid platform on which to base a Tri-Nations campaign.

The best thing that can be said about the Boks right now is that they are starting at home. Heaven help them if this shambolic lot were kicking off today in Dunedin or Brisbane.

* Mike Greenaway is rugby writer for the Natal Mercury in Durban.

- INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS (SOUTH AFRICA)