Can Boks join the likes of Trump in causing an upset?

ADRIAAN STRAUSS had to answer the perennial question at yesterday’s captain’s press conference ahead of today’s match at Twickenham. The one about transformation and race quotas and the effect it has on the confidence and togetherness of the Springbok squad. You don’t get them much in South Africa, but you do get them when the Boks are overseas.

Strauss almost perceptibly heaved a huge breath of frustration before shrugging his shoulders and telling the questioner that every player in the Bok squad is on this tour on merit and there was no question of anyone within the group thinking otherwise.

And Strauss is right. I can’t think of anyone on tour who shouldn’t be here and there may even be an argument to be forwarded that there should be at least one more player of colour in the starting team today. No, I am definitely not referring to Oupa Mohoje, but to Lionel Mapoe.

Francois Venter is an outstanding talent, and Mapoe arguably didn’t take his opportunity when it was given to him, but I’m of the view that his failures were because of the game-plan and the players who play on the inside. If you’re an outside centre and you have players alongside you who are poor distributors or are out of form, what are you supposed to do?

Also, if you earned your place in the team on the back of performances produced while playing the Lions’ attacking brand of rugby and you end up playing for a coach who has a much more conservative approach, then how can you expect to perform with any confidence? I think that is the problem with quite a few of the Lions players who have seen their international claims wane during the course of this season. And that does include Elton Jantjies too.

Jantjies though had clearly lost confidence by the time he was eventually dropped, and Pat Lambie was always Allister Coetzee’s first-choice flyhalf (in the absence of Handre Pollard anyway). The only thing that changed that was the CJ Stander tackle that concussed the Sharks pivot playing against Ireland in June.

Mapoe had lost confidence too, and Venter is in great form, so the Bok team that starts today is an entirely merit selection. I’d go for Rohan Janse van Rensburg ahead of Damian de Allende and if I was selecting the team I might have been even bolder in my deployment of Pieter-Steph du Toit,

than Coetzee has been in selecting him at blindside flank.

To me Du Toit’s alternative position to lock should be No 8. Jean- Luc du Preez is a prodigiously talented player and he is good over the ball. His future might well be at No 6. Perhaps he’s a bit raw for Coetzee’s liking at this point of his career, yet the coach did select him to tour so he must rate him. A Du Preez, Willem Alberts and Du Toit combination would have been my choice for today.

Some might question the omission of Mohoje and the Bok management must have considered his omission a sensitive issue or they wouldn’t have made such a big deal of how many carries Du Toit made in comparison to Mohoje in the last match.

There shouldn’t be any sensitivity though. Mohoje was anonymous against the Barbarians last Saturday, and while transformation is a non-negotiable, there needs to be some flexibility in the application of the means that are being employed to meet the goals that have been set. If you are playing blindside flank and make only two carries in a game, you can’t expect to be retained.

For me one of the big positives about today’s team is that although the improvisation at openside flank appears to be a massive gamble and could backfire (let’s face it though, the coach didn’t have too much other choice – the list of fit specialist South African openside flanks doesn’t exist), the Boks do today have the back row physical presence that has been lacking this year.

Mohoje is a decent player, but he is not built like the archetypical blindside flank, and that has been one of the reasons the back row has so often looked unbalanced and why the Boks have failed to win the collisions. Eddie Jones summed it up perfectly on Thursday – winning the gainline is what rugby is all about. Previous Bok No 7s such as Alberts and Juan Smith have been crucial to achieving that objective. If you go further back, so was Andre Venter.

Those players mentioned had different skills and attributes, but all of them were “big bruiser”. Mohoje doesn’t, and although I expect him to be back as a “horses for courses” selection against Italy in Florence next week, the requirements for today were emphatically not for a Mohoje type blindside flank. England must start as firm favourites to win today, but rain is expected and the heavy Bok pack could just hurt an England team that relies more than most on complete forward dominance to be successful. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Boks join Donald Trump and the Ireland rugby team on the parade of big November upsets.