Time to stop insulting our rugby intelligence with lame excuses wearing thin

Mediocrity is being given muscle because excuses continue to be found in SA’s Super Rugby defeats.

Front up SA. And then, just perhaps, a fix will follow. If not, prepare for more flat-lining.

Certain coaches are not good enough and certain players simply aren’t good enough. It is insanity to do the same-old, same-old every weekend and expect a different result.

South Africans also have to stop blaming defeat on youthfulness and inexperience. The Bulls team that provided SA rugby’s greatest embarrassment at the weekend contained six recent Springboks. The Bulls were playing at home against opposition whose team included fewer All Blacks than Boks and many youngsters experiencing on first tour in SA.

Inexperience and youthfulness should never be offered as an excuse when such inexperience and youth combine with old hands for a total of 15 players.

The Bulls are in crisis and have been for some time.

Changes have to be made or the union should simply refund the paying public and give them free access to watch a team in free fall.

To expect Bulls supporters to actually pay for the type of performance produced against the Crusaders is more theft of time and money than it is an insult to rugby intelligence.

The Bulls are the only South African franchise to have won Super Rugby’s title, which makes Saturday night’s debacle even more desperate.

A few weeks ago only 5,000 watched the Bulls at Loftus. That’s the kind of turnout their forebears used to get to a training session on the B field.

The people have spoken and still the decision makers at the franchise have not responded. Expect more pain and more disillusionment if there is no consequence to Saturday night’s lack of action.

Bulls head coach Nollis Marais tried to defuse the situation at the weekend by telling the media he would wait for the emotion to calm and then reflect.

The emotion, rightly, will not calm until Marais goes. He also said that it was not time to hide or “cry in the corner” but time to front up. Sadly, his team’s actions for the past two seasons have not matched the intent of those words and the coach’s results have lacked the impressive tone of his every prematch confidence.

Marais has to go and the Bulls have to find an identity that speaks to their glory years.

They also have to find comfort in embracing their traditional culture and not running from it.

The Bulls, like so many South African teams, are in no man’s land when it comes to playing style. They, like too many South African players and coaches, are obsessed with New Zealand rugby for all the wrong reasons. An obsession, in itself, is not a good thing, but the only thing SA should want to mirror from New Zealand is to be as consistently victorious as the Kiwis.

Why try to manufacture a style very much exclusive to New Zealand? Why try to copy the word’s best at their own game and believe there will be consistent success?

Take what is adaptable from the New Zealand game and marry it to strengths within the South African game. Find some bloody rugby intelligence.

There has to be clarity in the South African way and there has to be belief in being a clever rugby nation.

Kicking is not a crime in rugby; ill-considered and aimless kicking is. Off-loading in the tackle and simply shifting the ball side to side is not good rugby, if it is aimless and does not advance the attack.

Courage should be a given in any player’s performance, but it should never be the endorsement of a player or team’s pedigree, as was the case with the Stormers in scoring one try and conceding seven to the Hurricanes.

The Stormers showed great intent in the early part of the season to change their rugby philosophy, but the attempt to transfer one style to another without balance has ensured more pain than progress.

Balance and rugby intelligence are elements that have characterised the best South African teams at provincial, regional or Test level over 100 years.

Rugby intelligence is not exclusive to New Zealand rugby and it is rugby intelligence, and not the style of rugby, that will again make South African rugby strong.