Planning system that has no peer
Springbok rugby has a great deal to do with tradition and of those traditions, entrenched over the years, is that the players with the greatest number of Test caps – referred to as the menere – sit in the front row of the team photograph.
What brought this to mind is the reaction to the 30-23 Bok victory over the Pumas – a win largely due to late second half tries by Johan Goosen and Warren Whiteley – in Mbombela last weekend, the similarities in the national team photograph when I took over as coach in 2004, and the thought that we have, in real terms, gone nowhere in the intervening 12 years.
When that group picture was taken a dozen years ago, there was a total of 175 caps. Breyton Paulse had 60 of them and Os du Randt 40, so you can gauge from that that there wasn’t a great deal of experience in the bulk of the team. Western Province prop Eddie Andrews, wing Henno Mentz, Free State hooker Hanyani Shimange and Bulls scrumhalf Fourie du Preez were earning their first call-ups, Schalk Burger had two caps and lock Geo Cronje just one.
By the time the 2007 World Cup in France came round, the team had 649 caps and there were times under Peter de Villiers and Heyneke Meyer when that tally topped the 1 000 mark.
We have to use this to put last week’s Test into perspective. Whether they turned out for the underachieving Jaguares or the fiercely proud Pumas, the Argentinians had the benefit of having played together ... a lot. This was not the case with the Springboks.
You cannot expect a centre pairing, a second row and a tight five who have not been together for any real length of time, to instantly click into top gear. It is also difficult to classify Lood de Jager and Damian de Allende, who only have a handful of caps between them, as menere no matter how highly you rate them.
When you weigh the Boks up against the system the All Blacks have in place, the differences are obvious and there are plenty of books, freely available to the public, which spell out exactly what the New Zealanders are doing.
They have lost massive players like Richie McCaw and Dan Carter, talents which you would think would be near impossible to replace. Yet flanker Sam Cane already has 35 caps and to fill the enormous gap left at flyhalf by Carter’s move abroad, Beauden Barrett and Aaron Cruden have both played 40 internationals in an All Black jersey.
There is a coordinated system of succession which follows a national vision and extends to the coaching staff with Graham Henry at the helm of Wales and the British Lions before bringing the intellectual property he had gained abroad back to New Zealand.
Steve Hansen was also in charge of Wales before coming home and has Wayne Smith as his assistant, while New Zealander Warren Gatland currently coaches Wales and was in charge of the successful 2013 British Lions in Australia.
Joe Schmidt coaches Ireland, Aaron Mauger is at Leicester Tigers and John Plumtree has followed his stint of coaching the Sharks with a role at the Hurricanes.
This planning system is one of the reasons why the All Blacks as a brand have been compared to Ferrari and Coca-Cola.
Jake White is South Africa’s World Cup-winning coach of 2007 and currently director of coaching at French top-tier outfit Montpelli-