Coetzee must take blame for Bok woes

THE Springboks are staring into the abyss and there appears no way to halt their slide to their worst season in the professional era after Saturday’s 37-21 defeat against England at Twickenham.

It was the Boks’ sixth loss in 10 tests this season and they are still winless away from home under coach Allister Coetzee.

Defeat at Twickenham, in which the Boks were wholly outplayed barring short spells, also ended their 10-year unbeaten run against England.

It is a season of continuous lowlights and with Italy to come in Florence next weekend, that match suddenly looms as a tough encounter.

To add to the alarm, the current coaching staff really do not seem to be able to pinpoint where it is going wrong.

Coetzee agreed the defence was again “a bugbear” as he called it. He was also angry that the players did not handle England’s aerial assault well, which was true.

But he said in the build-up that his team would face an aerial bombardment and when it came they could not deal with it.

Are the players being properly prepared and is the team culture strong enough?

“If we can improve by giving new players an opportunity we will look at that,” Coetzee said.

“In the crucial moments of the game, we made mistakes and momentum was taken away from us.

“We conceded silly penalties as well.

“Just after we conceded a try, we then conceded a penalty to make it 20-9 at half time.

“We had them under pressure at times and then couldn’t handle a simple contestable box kick.

“The big thing is that players have to learn and understand how important individual errors are and take responsibility for that.”

Blaming the players is not good enough. They are accountable but so are Coetzee and his staff.

There appears to be a lack of leadership both on and off the field and while it is true that SA has a dearth of truly world-class players at the moment, it is still no excuse for a defensive system that fails every week allied to an impotent attack.

Johan Goosen’s 58th minute try, when the Boks were already 30-9 down, showed some attacking ambition for the first time in the match.

It was the Boks’ first test try in 280 minutes of test rugby, going back to Bryan Habana’s 19th-minute score against the All Blacks in Christchurch on September 17.

When challenged about the lack of attacking threat Coetzee said: “We scored four tries against the Barbarians last week.”

Did the coach really equate that festival run to a test?

There are real and serious structural problems in South African rugby but they are not new and not unique to Coetzee.

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