A hard-earned lesson for knockout success
LONDON: Schalk Burger’s eternally beaming face briefly gave way to a deep frown yesterday when he was asked what lessons had been learned from the 2011 World Cup defeat to Australia in New Zealand that might help the Boks win Saturday’s quarter-final against Wales.
“A quantity of bottles of red wine have been drained while discussing how we conspired to lose that match,” Burger said wistfully.
“More than any other defeat, that one has haunted me, and I know the other guys who played that day feel the same way. It still bugs me.”
Of the squad that feature in the Springboks’ disastrous 9-11 defeat to the Wallabies, a number are again doing World Cup duty for their country: Burger, Victor Matfield, Fourie du Preez, Bismarck du Plessis, Patrick Lambie, Bryan Habana, J P Pietersen, Morne Steyn, Francois Louw and Willem Alberts, while Jean de Villiers is with the current squad, albeit in an unofficial capacity since breaking his jaw against Samoa.
“We played all of the rugby, created nearly all the tryscoring opportunities, yet lost. If that game was played over again, nine times out of 10 we would have won it. We completely dominated Australia,” he said.
Lesson
Without mentioning the refereeing, what lesson did the Boks learn that day that they can embrace this week?
“Despite dominating the opposition, we failed to build an innings on the scoreboard,” Burger said. “You have to do that in knockout rugby. We succumbed to scoreboard pressure, while our failure to convert pressure into points gave them increasing hope that they could somehow sneak a victory,” Burger said.
“That’s the biggest thing that we learnt. It doesn’t matter how much rugby you play, if you don’t build scoreboard pressure on the opposition, then you can end up losing the match.
“Hopefully, we don’t have a repeat of that for this quarterfinal, and we can get the scoreboard ticking early.”
That contingent are all four years older now, with a good quotient of them now on the wrong side of 30, but Burger said that experience was vital in handling the pressure of a knock-out game.
“To state the obvious, when you are younger, you only know what you know. When you are older, you have experienced Second ODI, India v SA 9.30am, SS2/CSN a few losses and the pain that comes with them.
“I lost in two quarter-finals in 2003 and 2011, and in 2007 we went all the way. We have learnt from our mistakes, so we can probably prepare the youngsters for what happens if it does not go well.
“The biggest thing for us is that we have a calmness about us,” the 32-year-old said.
“Obviously, we draw a lot from the younger players’ energy, and they have got to bring the dynamicism while we have to bring the leadership.
“There is a big onus on the senior players to make the right calls on the field. As with any game, there will be big calls to be made on Saturday, and hopefully that’s where we will put our hands up and give the team some direction.”
Burger said that this year’s campaign was a microcosm of his life as a Springbok since he made his debut in 2003.
“This World Cup has been a lot like my career with its ups and downs, the setbacks, the good wins and the test of character,” he smiled.
“We started with the most famous loss in World Cup history against Japan, and after that the next two weeks were probably my toughest in 12 years as a Springbok,” he said.
“I don’t think people understand how shocked we were to lose to Japan, and how that gave way to despair and then we had to pull ourselves together to avoid the ultimate humiliation of not making it out of our pool.
“We turned the corner to come back and win against Samoa and Scotland, topped our group and have a quarterfinal against Wales that, if we win, takes us to within two victories of the title. We can do it. Of course we can,” Burger said.
“What’s important about this group is we pressed the reset button after that loss and came back fighting, and we will fight to the death against Wales. We have to, because we know they are going to do the same.”