Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Brüssow lords it over Kiwis Meyer should pick flanker who hasn’t lost to bogey team
HE COACHED a team to a World Cup title, was a recipient of the International Ruby Board’s (IRB) Coach of the Year award and he won many TriNations trophies with the All Blacks, but there is one thing Sir Graham Henry never managed to do during his distinguished career – he never experienced victory against a team with Heinrich Brüssow in it.
Put that another way and it has even more impact – Henry coached the All Blacks against a Springbok team that had Brüssow on the openside flank four times, and they lost four times. They were the last games the All Blacks lost to the South Africans.
Brüssow won the man of the match award in his first appearance against them in Bloemfontein in 2009, and again the last time he met them, which was in Port Elizabeth in August 2011. That means he has been man of the match in 50 percent of the games he has played against the Kiwis.
Now that Brüssow has rediscovered his old mojo for the Cheetahs, and is fulfilling the primary role of a fetcher flank by being a pain in the butt to opposing teams, the million dollar question will be asked and answered this coming week: Will Bok coach Heyneke Meyer put aside his antipathy towards the Brüssow type of player and select him?
Hopes were raised when Meyer named him in a 36-man training squad this week. But it is just a training squad, and some of the media hype over the group may be premature. The Boks have a large contingent of overseas-based players coming back to play in the June Test matches. A minimum of 10 of the players who will train in Durban from this coming Monday will not be included on the list that will be named next Saturday for the matches against a World XV, Wales twice and Scotland.
Meyer could be genuinely looking forward to working with Brüssow for the first time, as he stated when the training squad was announced. Or he could just have included Brüssow for the sake of appearance.
But whatever the reasoning, Meyer getting to work with Brüssow is a positive step in the sense that the national coach isn’t as stubborn as some think he is. He proved that last year when in working with Willie le Roux, a player he also was initially dead against, he became so impressed by Le Roux’s “ability to be coached” that the Free Stater ended up playing almost every Bok Test last year.
To be fair to Meyer, when it comes to his continued omission of Brüssow, the flanker has seldom been in as good form as he is now. He’s had an ongoing battle with injuries and hasn’t spent an unbroken spell on the field since his dream season in 2009, which was when three of his four wins over the All Blacks were scored.
He was missing for the whole of 2010, when Henry’s team thumped the Boks in all three Tests, and had only just returned to action after another lay-off when he was a blood splattered recipient of the man of the match award at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium 12 months later.
Henry’s summary of that game at the post-match media conference was telling.
“He was a problem for us in 2009, the last time he played us, and two years later he has come back (from injury) and nothing has changed. He is a class player,” said Henry.
“I reckon it has something to do with his low centre of gravity. Whatever it is, he is very good on the ball.”
That low centre of gravity may be part of the reason Meyer hasn’t gone for Brüssow before now.
Meyer, like one of his predecessors, Jake White, is not sold on the concept of a specialist opensider who doesn’t have the physical attributes that can make him a factor in the lineouts and as forceful a ball carrier. But something happened this week that might suggest White has changed his mind. For yesterday’s game against the Blues, the now Sharks coach selected the diminutive veteran Jacques Botes. Perhaps his exposure to excellent specialist fetchers in his time with the Brumbies has prompted a change of direction.
White’s pre-match comments about Botes’ selection being specifically geared towards “being hard to the ball” was certainly a significant departure from his infamous “The only fetchers I know are my sons, who fetch me beers from the fridge” comment of 2006.
The rise of Francois Louw as a fetcher who is also good at carrying has partly vindicated Meyer over the past 18 months. It was when Louw was reintroduced and paired up with his former Stormers teammate Duane Vermeulen halfway through the 2012 season that Meyer’s fortunes changed after a less than auspicious start to his reign as Bok coach.
And with the irrepressible Marcell Coetzee (currently injured) growing into the fetcher role under White’s tutelage at the Sharks, and also offering more than just specialist skills, it’s not as though Meyer doesn’t have options. However, one thing Louw and Coetzee have yet to do for the Boks is beat the All Blacks, and the alacrity with which the Kiwis were able to get the ball back from the breakdowns was a defining feature of their win in last year’s Rugby Championship decider.
With probably only one more clash with the All Blacks scheduled before next year’s World Cup, as the 2015 Rugby Championship is likely to be played over only one round, getting a morale-boosting win over the world’s No 1 team must be first priority for the coming international season. Meyer will be selling both himself and the country short if he doesn’t give some consideration to the possibility that Brüssow has been the missing link from the side that dominated the All Blacks five years ago.
By the sounds of things Henry thinks so, for this is what he said in his new role as Argentina technical adviser after being asked to comment on South Africa’s thumping win over the South American nation at Soccer City last year: “The Bok pack was very good although they might need to improve their breakdown work against New Zealand. I can’t believe they’re not picking Heinrich Brüssow. He’s an excellent player.”
That’s high praise indeed from a man who owes his most significant success to the world’s best at what Brüssow does, Richie McCaw.