Bok attrition rate is down to workload
For a coach to have trust in a player is always a good thing, but sometimes it can cross the line into over-dependency, as we have seen with Malcolm Marx, and then the player, his team and sometimes even the national side suffer.
Marx has started 10 of the Lions’ 11 matches this season and played off the bench in the other one, racking up 706 minutes of game time. Of course a player of his tremendous abilities, especially in the collisions and breakdowns, is always going to be a key performer and will be used a lot. But, coming on top of his heavy workload for the Springboks last year, the 23-year-old is among the half-dozen most-played tight forwards in the whole of Super Rugby.
Unsurprisingly, something had to give and it was his hamstring, ruling him out of action for six weeks. It is not only a major blow for the Lions, but also for Rassie Erasmus and the Springboks as they enter into a new era with a daunting series against England.
And it’s not as if Lions coach Swys de Bruin did not have other options. Robbie Coetzee is a very reliable hooker, good enough to tour with the Springboks at the end of 2014, but he has only played 160 minutes of Super Rugby this year.
Renowned sports scientist Professor Tim Noakes may now have a massive following of skinny people thanks to his groundbreaking dietary work, but his former passion was how players would inevitably get injured after reaching a certain threshold of minutes without getting a break.
“The players will pace themselves and make more mistakes, there won’t be the same intensity, they’ll cut out sprinting on the field, for instance. It’s because they’re exhausted. The brain tells the body to go easy and the players aren’t even aware of it. They’ll
Ken Borland
know they’re tired, but it won’t be a deliberate attempt to hold back. It’s just that their bodies can’t give them anything more,” Noakes said back in 2012.
This over-reliance on players is not exclusively a Lions thing either, although it does seem to be peculiarly South African.
Franco Mostert (863) and Kwagga Smith (741) have also been racking up the minutes and are among the dozen forwards in the competition who have played the most, along with Bulls lock Lood de Jager (712), Sharks captain Ruan Botha (800) and the Stormers trio of Ramone Samuels (736), Siya Kolisi (806) and Wilco Louw (794).
The only overseas forwards to also have this sort of workload are the Blues’ standout flank Akira Ioane (790), England-bound Hurricanes loose forward Brad Shields (702), Rebels go-to carrier Amanaki Mafi (722) and Waratahs captain Michael Hooper (710).
As is the case in so much of what South African rugby does, this is diametrically opposed to the New Zealand method.
Key All Black forwards like Sam Whitelock (541), Codie Taylor (504), Sam Cane (614) and Brodie Retallick (562) are being carefully managed, and will surely be able to give their best come the international season.
Plenty of young up-and-coming players are entrusted with meaningful game time, and their development is quicker because of it.
Will Rassie Erasmus’s probable first-choice tight five be able to up their game against England and in the Rugby Championship? Even players like Pieter-Steph du Toit (670) and Steven Kitshoff (624) have high numbers when it comes to playing time this season.
Of course Erasmus now has to find a replacement for Marx, who would have been one of his key players.
Adriaan Strauss, who has been well-managed by the Bulls with only 434 minutes to his name, is certainly up to the task, but does he want to make a return to Test rugby?
If not, then the new Springbok coach is either going to have to turn to an experienced player like Chiliboy Ralepelle or unproven contenders like Bongi Mbonambi, Scarra Ntubeni or one of the uncapped trio of Akker van der Merwe, Jaco Visagie or Samuels.
Key lock Eben Etzebeth also needs to get going again, having missed the whole Super Rugby season so far, undoubtedly partly due to the heavy workload he had last year.