Foreign legion will lend Springboks gravitas
● Having almost a third of their squad based abroad will lend the Springboks a steely resolve at this year’s Rugby World Cup (RWC).
Former Bok fullback and now coach and part-time commentator Thinus Delport believes having a healthy contingent of players based in Europe may well help lend the squad the balance to be competitive.
It’s clear Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus’s foreign legion will be quite considerable. He called up 10 foreign-based players to his alignment camp in Pretoria.
Marcell Coetzee (Ulster), Willie le Roux (Toyota Verblitz), Cheslin Kolbe (Toulouse), Franco Mostert (Gloucester), Vincent Koch (Saracens), Frans Steyn (Montpellier), Rynhardt Elstadt (Toulouse), Cobus Reinach (Northampton), Faf de Klerk (Sale Sharks) and Francois Louw (Bath) were all invited.
Primed for Test conditions
Delport, who is based in the UK, agrees players who campaign in the Top 14, Premiership and Pro 14, not to mention the European Champions Cup (ECC) are hard-wired to more consistently perform in a cauldron-like environment. Matches there are predominantly played close to the gainline, at an intensity that requires unremitting physical commitment and demands judicious decision-making under pressure.
He agrees the ECC is a lot closer to the highest form of the game.
“Look at the players involved in those competitions,” advised Delport. “You find a cross section of players from Europeans, to South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders, Tongans, Samoans etc. We are talking about Test players.
“Look at the Super Rugby quarterfinals where the Sharks played against the Brumbies. Coenie (Oosthuizen) was the only player with real experience in their pack. You will never find just one forward with proper experience in the quarters of the ECC.
“In the Premiership this year the competition was really close, okay, maybe not the top two but between positions three and 10 it was very competitive. Newcastle was fourth last year and this year they got relegated.
“That is what the European competitions offer you, the pressure of relegation,” said Delport, fully aware that the only way to exact change in Super Rugby is by committee.
Delport reckons teams with the “right experience” have gone on to win the RWC. To illustrate that point he mentions the RWCs of 2003, 2007 and 2015. He does, however, have a caveat. “You still have to strike a balance between youth and experience.”
Don’t compromise on fitness
However, the one potential drawback of loading the squad with too many foreignbased players is the management of their workloads. When wearing his hat as SA Rugby’s director of rugby, Erasmus has input in the number of minutes his marquee players are exposed to in Super Rugby. His range of influence is a little more constrained beyond our borders.
“My big question is always, how have these guys been managed through the year,” asked Delport.
That of course differs wildly from one player to the next. Reinach, for instance, played in all 22 of Northampton’s Premiership games, only coming off the bench once.
Mostert, who played himself to a standstill at the Lions before leaving for Gloucester, had a less taxing season with only 16 starts after injury sidelined him early on.
Coetzee, who played just 52 minutes for Ulster in the 2017/18 season due to crippling injury, racked up more than 1,000 minutes in the last Pro 14 campaign.
Crucially though, Erasmus, with his foreign legion in tow, now need not dwell on A’s misadventures in this year’s Super Rugby.