Boks in disarray after poor 2016 results
SO WHERE to from here for the Springboks? After an eighth defeat this year and ending November’s northern hemisphere tour winless for the first time since 2002, was another addition to a growing list of embarrassments for South African rugby in 2016.
Allister Coetzee’s Boks played three Tests losing 37-21 to England, 20-18 against Italy and 27-13 to Wales to rack up defeats six, seven and eight in the calendar year. They also drew 31-31 against a makeshift Barbarians team. This touring party wasn’t even an impersonation of a Springbok team, it was a shallow facsimile of a once powerful rugby collective.
South Africa has been playing Test rugby for 125 years and there has never been a worse season because despite everything, Coetzee has not controlled what he could control.
The coach has spent the last month, since the historic indaba, hammering home the message that SA rugby structure is weak and that the Springboks’ problems are the symptom of those weaknesses.
But that doesn’t exonerate him from his duty to develop a team and construct it on simple, time-honoured rugby basics.
Defence was treated as a discipline that would take care of itself rather than a top priority. Three defence coaches over a period of 12 Tests underlines just how shambolic the preparation for the season was.
Coetzee has complained that he didn’t have time to properly prepare, given that he was officially appointed on April 11. It’s a valid point, but then he should have prioritised the basics and prepared a team with a watertight defence and a limited game plan to ensure better results.
Not only didn’t he control the controllables, as sports people say, he never even identified what they were.