It’s open gates if Combrinck and Whiteley get to run hard at these Irish backs

THE IRISH say they expect the Springboks to start with the quick-paced game that buried them in the latter stages at Ellis Park. Allister Coetzee disagrees, and says his men have engaged the reset button and will be playing a tactical game in the early stages at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium today. Who is right?

My money says the Boks will probably do what Coetzee says they will, with the early stages of the deciding Test in the three-match series being all about trying to wrest physical and territorial dominance.

There’s a reason that Coetzee keeps using that old cricket analogy about hitting sixes only after you’ve played yourself in.

And there would be logic to the approach. As dominant as the Boks were in the closing stages last week, this is a whole new game and Coetzee is right when he says it all starts again from scratch.

The Irish fell off tackles like they had taken lessons from Mike Catt’s attempts to tackle Jonah Lomu in 1995, but they will have thought a lot about that during the build- up work and will have worked hard on correction.

To use another cricket reference, moving from altitude back to the coast and starting again could be akin to a batsman who has just scored a century on a flat wicket having to play his next innings on a spiteful grassy pitch.

But while I’d normally agree with Coetzee, as there is no such thing as an easy Test match, this might be one day where engaging the gears that were hit late in the game last week could be worth a try. The reason I say that is because the Boks did show that if you run hard at the Ireland backs, there is a way through.

Yes, it was late in the game, and the Irish were tired. That, though, isn’t what I’m thinking about when I suggest the Boks might profit, if all the talk about reverting to territory rugby in the first half is just a set-up of the sort that netted Peter de Villiers one of his finest wins as Bok coach.

That came in Perth in 2009 when all the talk in the buildup was about the Boks continuing with the subdue and penetrate suffocation tactics that had earned them three TriNations wins on home soil. The Wallabies didn’t know what hit them when they were confronted with an all-embracing, possession-orientated strategy that set up a big Bok win.

Why it might work to do something similar today is because of the relative sizes of the two back divisions.

It doesn’t happen often, and is still unlikely to be the case against Antipodean opposition, but the injuries that have robbed Ireland of Robbie Henshaw and Jared Payne have left the Irish looking rather light across the middle.

Ireland flyhalf Paddy Jackson won his tactical battle against the Boks in the first half at Ellis Park, and also for the entire match at Newlands before that. But every time one of the bigger Bok backs ran at him in the second half, it was as if someone had shouted: “Open gates!” The midfield is small by international standards in the absence of Henshaw.

Size doesn’t matter if you are an individual like Cheslin Kolbe and you are fitting into a team who has big players around you. It does matter if you are Cheslin Kolbe and everyone around you could be your twin.

Coetzee knows this, for it was the lack of size in his back division that prevented him from coaching a more expansive game at the Stormers once Jaque Fourie and Sireli Naqelevuki were no longer part of his backline mix.

The Bok coach has spoken a lot about the merits of having Ruan Combrinck in the side today from the viewpoint of him kicking with his right foot. The initial selection for Ellis Park was flawed, and it enabled the Irish to easily keep the Boks pinned in their left corner in their first half.

When Combrinck came on they couldn’t keep following that approach, and his presence in the starting team could well dictate that the Irish will have to play a different game. They may have to carry the ball more.

But Combrinck doesn’t just bring a right foot. He also brings a combination of size and pace that makes all the difference to the Bok attacking potential out wide, something that is further augmented by the selection of Warren Whiteley.

The injured Duane Ver- meulen is one of the finest No 8s in the world, but he does get across the gainline differently to the way that Whiteley does. The pacy Lions captain hits the outside channels and when he does so, the opposition feel like they are up against an extra backline player, and one that has plenty of size too.

There is a caveat, of course, and a big one. A quick-paced game won’t come together at the start of a game if your forwards are on the back foot, and the Irish pack that play today is better than the one that played last week. But this is one day when the significant Bok advantage may be at the back, and it is an advantage they should be looking to exploit.