Coaches under the cosh
ISH! 57-0. What a humiliation and a rugby lesson at the same time as the Springboks suffered their worst ever defeat in their long-running battles with the All Blacks.
One would have thought with the scoreline at 31-0 in favour of the home side at half-time, that Bok coach Alistair Coetzee would have switched to Plan B, or even Plan C, for that matter and come out guns blazing in the second half. But that was not to be.
The final result was truly amazing. So what happened?
Nothing really, if you examine the way the Boks played. They were beaten in every facet of the game.
They were atrocious at the back, simply not good enough in the middle of the pack and were virtually non-existent in forward play, with the All Blacks’ defence having an easy stroll in the park as they were never really threatened.
Following their 23-all draw with Australia in Perth a week before, I began watching in anticipation of a great contest. But the Boks just never showed up. In contrast, the All Blacks were the exact opposite, delivering a truly worldclass performance.
Could the game have been lost in the first 20 minutes, when the Boks came close to scoring a try or two?
Visiting coaches from around the world and especially in football will always tell their respective teams that the first 20 minutes of the game are crucial.
But while the Boks missed a few opportunities, the All Blacks showed how good they are on the counter-attack and punished the slightest of errors by Coetzee’s team, and before you could say “Jack Robinson”, it was 22-0.
On paper, this is a good team that could be world-beaters, but that is where any similarities end.
You can have the best team, but if they do not play as a cohesive unit on the day, the game is lost before the first whistle.
Sure, the entire squad and the coaching staff will be hurting, but they will have to get up, dust themselves off and get ready, more emotionally than physically or strategically, for their next game, back home against the Wallabies on September 30.
But the real test will be at Newlands a week later (October 7), when the Boks again face the Haka and the All Blacks.
A win, even by the slightest of margins, or even a draw, would go a long way in restoring confidence and pride in the team.
FROM the oval to the round ball, and yet again we speak about the poor performances of the national soccer team, Bafana Bafana.
I mentioned in a previous column that Bafana were perhaps on a new path to victory after Stuart Baxter was appointed and won his first two games.
But alas, since then there has been nothing to gloat about.
Incidentally, Cape Verde is a small island with a population of approximately half a million people.
Compare that population with South Africa’s and you can understand the magnitude of the loss in both legs to the Cape Verdeans.
And in all probability, South Africa will not be at the next World Cup in Russia next year.
Now that’s a big blow. At the post-match briefing in Durban, the usually talkative Baxter was at a loss for words following his team’s lacklustre performance. “I thought we played well,” he said. When a team plays well, you expect them to walk off the pitch in victory.
Baxter knows that possession and territorial advantage count for nothing if you cannot turn that into a winning performance.
Bafana are propping up the Group D African Qualifiers log, and Fifa have decreed that the game against Senegal, which Bafana won 2-1, will have to be replayed.
Talk about rubbing salt into one’s wounds.
Initially, Safa were quite vehement after Fifa ruled that the game was to be replayed, but since then common sense has prevailed at Safa, who now agree that the game, in the interest of fair play, be replayed.
Mathematically, Bafana can still qualify for Russia 2018, but they will need to win all three remaining matches – at home against Burkina Faso and Senegal and then away to Senegal in Dakar, while also hoping that other Group D results go their way. Now that’s a tall order. South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup with automatic qualification, but have not qualified since 2002. Just how long Baxter stays on as coach is anybody’s guess. The big question is, who will replace him should he go?
With both Alistair Coetzee and Baxter struggling in their respective coaching positions, let’s hope that the newly appointed Ottis Gibson can elevate the Proteas to greater heights.
Naresh Maharaj is sports editor/ presenter on DYR 105.1fm. He is also an MC, international sports correspondent, voice-over artist and freelance motoring journalist. E-mail: maharaj@telkomsa. net