Jackson: Wales miss out on the Springbok invasion
When it comes to wrapping South Africans up in their national colours, Wales stand apart from the rest of the Six Nations. They have not picked one in seven years. A fortnight ago in Dublin, Scotland and Ireland capped seven in one match. The visitors produced four – Jaco van der Walt, Duhan van der Merwe, Willem Nel and Ollie Kebble. Their hosts almost matched them man for man with CJ Stander, Rob Herring and Quinn Roux.
Traditionalists may be tempted to applaud the Welsh refusal to follow the common herd, to see them in a romantic light, an isolated case of a country clinging to the battered old concept of a national XV composed entirely of native players. The reality is rather different.
It’s not as if the WRU has been claiming any moral ground on an emotive topic, more a case that the would-be Springboks imported by all four regions in recent years have not measured up to Test selection.
The Scots and Irish would appear to have been considerably better at identifying Test players in the making and developing them while in the process of qualifying through residence, a period to be increased from three years to five with effect from next month.
Certainly, they have had an infinitely higher conversion rate. Wales over the last ten years have managed the grand total of one – Andries Pretorius whose Test career began in Osaka against Japan in June 2013 and ended in Tokyo the following week.
The Welsh regional quartet have signed no shortage of South Africans over the last decade: Rynier Bernardo, George Earle, Rynard Landman, Brok Harris, Sarel Pretorius, Hanno Dirksen, Jacob Adriaanse and Johan Snyman to name but some. Others, most notably Werner Kruger, were ineligible from the start as fully-fledged Springboks.
Some signings have been unfortunate to put it mildly. It begs a question which illustrates the chaotic nature of the transfer market: Which Welsh team signed a South African international and never played him?
Answer: Cardiff Blues. They signed Test lock Franco van der Merwe from Ulster four years ago to a fanfare of trumpets before off-loading him to London Irish with indecent haste once they realised they couldn’t afford him.
Others were just plain unlucky, most notably Michiel de Kock Steenkamp, a multi-dimensional back-five forward whose arrival at the Ospreys from the Stormers coincided with the declaration of an ambition to qualify for Wales. A ruptured Achilles tendon days later began a chain of events which ended with Steenkamp heading home 14 months later after two matches.
‘Project players’, as the home Unions like to call them, is merely a euphemism for finding potential internationals on distant shores and relocating them, in the case of Bundee Aki, from South Auckland on the Pacific to Connacht on the western edge of the Atlantic.
Aki has been terrific for Ireland, a fixture in midfield with a Grand Slam to his name. The same can be said of another Kiwi centre, Hadleigh Parkes, whom Wayne Pivac brought to Llanelli.
“The Scots and Irish appear to have been considerably better at identifying Test players in the making and developing them”
As the national head coach, he has inherited a squad sorely lacking in reinforcements from the southern hemisphere, a deficiency exacerbated by Welsh concern at falling numbers. Yet of all the regions’ southern hemisphere signings, Johnny McNicholl, another of Pivac’s inspired captures for the Scarlets, stands alone as the only one to make the Test team via residency.
The other New Zealander capped by Wales in the last decade, Gareth Anscombe, qualified by ancestry. The jury may still be out on McNicholl after appearances curtailed by injury but the paucity of overseas material puts Wales at a disadvantage compared to Scotland and Ireland.
There was a time when proposals for importing future Test players were treated with contempt. During the early stages of his Welsh reign, Graham Henry proposed that the WRU sign a number of near-Springboks as part of a long-term strategy to make Wales more competitive.
One of the more outspoken members of the general committee, the late Les Williams, succeeded in nipping it in the bud. Twenty years on, the game has changed.
No amount of internal protest stopped the Six Nations exploiting the residency rule, aided and abetted, however unwittingly, by World Rugby’s inexcusable failure to allow the ludicrously short qualification period of three years to last as long as it did.
The trickle has become if not a flood, then a steady flow. Over the last ten months, Scotland capped five ‘project players’, four South Africans (Jaco van der Walt, Oli Kebble, Duhan van der Merwe, Kyle Steyn) and one Australian (Nick Haining).
Ireland capped three over the same period – Munster’s South African lock Jean Kleyn followed by the Leinster Kiwis Jamison Gibson-Park and James Lowe. Even England, with all their vast playing resources, have taken full advantage, picking five New Zealanders in the last four years: Willi Heinz, Brad Shields, Denny Solomona, Ben Te’o and Teimana Harrison.
The numbers of overseas players picked by each of the Six Nations does not include those who arrived as boys. Three spring to mind: Taulupe Faletau who moved to Wales when his father, Fea’o, joined Pontypool; Joey Carbery whose family returned to Ireland from New Zealand and Manu Tuilagi, a product of the English schools system.