You can’t win rugby’s lottery with no ticket

Heyneke Meyer made a great point last week. The former Springbok coach said that we should be mindful amid our obsession with New Zealand rugby not to blindly try and follow them, because if it takes us five years to catch up to their current level, they would still be five years ahead because of their own ongoing development. The knowledgeable Meyer’s advice is to rather focus on our own strengths.

Apart from the high-flying Lions, I had to think real hard about what strengths he is actually referring to on face value. But seeing Blitzbok captain Philip Snyman celebrating winning the Sevens World Series title with his troops on Sunday made the penny drop.

No don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to suggest that the Blitzboks restored some of the pride the Springboks lost during their annus horribilis in 2016. It will take far more than a Sevens plaster to heal the deep cuts the Boks suffered and I know mentioning Sevens and the 15-man code in the same sentence is a case of comparing apples with oranges.

But hear me out. Sevens are played on a similarly sized field with an identical oval ball and require of its players to have immense game awareness, excellent one-on-one tackling abilities, lightning speed off the mark, streetwise expertise around the ruck area, the ability to effectively offload, and supreme fitness.

Over the course of the Super Rugby season I have seen far too many South African players lacking some or even most of these skills, while the Blitzboks clearly tick all the boxes given their status as the world champions. In fact, they are the champions by a landslide as their 28-point gap over Fiji in the final standings would indicate, taking into account the maximum amount of points on offer in each of the 10 tournaments is only 22.

And to think just three years ago, the New Zealand Sevens side seemed invincible. They had just won their fourth World Series title on the trot and 12th out of 15 between 1999 and 2014, and advanced to their fifth Commonwealth Games final with an incredible unbeaten record at the quadrennial event. Guess what, the Boks not only pipped them for gold, but set the pace alongside Fiji to deprive the Kiwi Sevens side of major silverware for the next three years.

To do the once unthinkable and reel the Kiwis in and leave them in their wake takes some doing and the Blitzboks undoubtedly add value to South African rugby.

So my question is, if we can dominate one rugby code requiring a skill set we clearly have in abundance, why can’t we at least be decent in another game requiring a similar set of skills?

So am I suggesting we take the risk of incorporating more Sevens savvy into our 15-man philosophy? Maybe.

Is that even possible at all? I don’t know, I’m not a coach.

But can you win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket? No.