LOCKING HORNS
Tighted is your go-to-guy
JANNIE du Plessis has a saying: “The seeds of failure are sown in your success.”
That was his way of brushing aside the concern that he is the only tighthead capable of playing at the highest level in this country.
“It means when you’re successful you are more likely to develop a bad habit or become complacent.
“I cannot say that I’m the only tighthead capable of playing for the Boks because that would be extremely arrogant. But the responsibility of playing for the team, especially one that has played for a while, is massive.”
By extension then, there must be other tightheads Du Plessis rates highly and the man the Bok management is trying to convert into a tighthead, Coenie Oosthuizen, springs to mind.
“Coenie is a good athlete and I’m not sure at his age I could have done the things that he does. It’s nice to have a young player who can apply a bit of pressure.
“A guy like Lourens Adriaanse is technically very good and I’ve thought so for some time. BJ Botha is good and CJ van der Linde at his best is very, very good.
“Wiehahn Herbst who plays with me at the Sharks is a nononsense type of guy who doesn’t complain.”
Du Plessis explained coaches look for different qualities in tightheads. “The people I rate, other people may find useless. Tightheads get the job done. He should be your go-to guy five metres from the line in the wet when you need a steady platform for a relieving kick. He should live for those moments.”
Change, some say, is as good as a holiday and for the grizzled Du Plessis the new scrum law breaks the monotony and sharpens the mind for a new challenge. He has embraced it.
“There is a measure of apprehension with props every time there is a law change. You wonder if you are still going to be effective. You have to recognise a challenge and embrace it. That is what sport is about. I don’t know too many guys who don’t have fear. If you don’t have fear it means things don’t mean anything to you.”
The new laws, which the Boks played under for the first time yesterday, pose different challenges.
“This is the biggest change. For 10 years of your career you trained to generate speed within a short distance. Now the distance between the packs is so small you can’t generate speed.
“Coupled with that speed you could feed the scrum and its what we called ‘work on contact’. It could last just three seconds. Now you pack down, wait and then the ball comes in and then you hook it back. I reckon the scrum will last up till three times longer.
“You are going to need a different type of fitness. You are also going to need endurance.”
He recounted a conversation he had with former Bok prop Ollie le Roux that shed more light on that aspect. “Ollie explained it, but not in the context of the law change, but rather the difference between Super Rugby and test rugby. He said in Super Rugby you required a lot of explosive power because rucks, scrums and mauls don’t go on for that long because people want to see flowing rugby.
“In tests, those rucks, scrums and mauls go on for longer. You don’t require explosive power but you’ll use more wattage. Under the new laws you are going to burn more energy to steady the scrum and get clean ball.”
That could mean that a player who starts a game will perhaps have a more equitable time-split with the one on the bench.
“Or maybe you pick a bloke you know can play for 70 minutes and have a bloke who can be really explosive for 10 minutes or so from the bench,” added Du Plessis. “That is every coach’s way of thinking because rugby is like chess.”