Mental staleness after Lions series and lack of attack coach trouble Springboks

It was both interesting and frustrating to watch two key members of the Springbok team that swept all before them en route to what was then the Tri-Nations in 2009 speculating in their role as post-match television analysts on what went wrong in Brisbane.

Interesting because former captains John Smit and Jean de Villiers were spot on in pinpointing where it went wrong for the team at Suncorp Stadium. It was execution. Pure and simple. What was most disturbing was not so much that the world champions lost, but that they did so while so far off their game in areas that are usually their strengths.

That has to come down to mental staleness. Lions coach Warren Gatland kept speaking during the recent series about the huge sacrifices his players had had to make by spending so long in isolation. It wasn’t any different for the Boks. Maybe initially it wasn’t a hard lockdown for the hosts, but there was a measure of isolation for them right from the start of their training camp in Bloemfontein, which was early June.

If after climbing the Everest of beating the Lions in such trying circumstances an element of mental fatigue and maybe even anticlimax has set in, that would be understandable. They may be champion rugby players, but they are human. Their Antipodean opponents have not gone through what they have been through in terms of time in camp and away from their normal home life.

But back to Smit and De Villiers. Why what they were saying was as frustrating as it was interesting was that they were missing a point when speaking about the execution failure that tripped up the Boks. That point being that they have had personal experience of it and at that very venue.

In 2009 Smit’s Boks were also occasionally criticised for being too conservative. Yet they won five of their six Tri-Nations games comprehensively. The one exception was the game against the Wallabies in Brisbane, where they were outplayed 21-6 by a team that pretty much did what the Wallabies did two days ago by beating them at their own game.

Execution was the problem that day. It was fixed a week later when they travelled across the Tasman and beat the All Blacks in Hamilton.

Fixing their execution turned them into a different animal. If it were not for the mental staleness issue, that historical precedent would be something encouraging for the Boks to grab onto ahead of Saturday’s clash with the Kiwis.

It would be wrong though to write off what should be an important wake-up call as just the result of mental staleness. Seeing how awkward the Boks looked when they played away from their normal template and tried to introduce the variations critics had been calling for got me thinking about something that has long been a concern: the lack of a dedicated, experienced specialist backline and attack coach in the Bok group.

Flyhalf Handré Pollard said the attacking performance in Brisbane was the best Bok one this year. If that is so, I would hate to see them on their bad days. Yes, they had more attacking intent than they normally do, and they might have been guilty of almost playing too much rugby.

But having intent and doing it well, and knowing what to do, are different things.

The Bok backs, to put it bluntly, did not look like they had thought too much about it. Much of the running was lateral and when Makazole Mapimpi got the ball he was usually hemmed in by defenders on the touchline. The variation that was introduced was naive and lacked the innovation needed to trouble the Australian defence.

Which took me back to some of the better Bok attacking performances under Rassie

Erasmus, such as his very first series against England and against the All Blacks in Wellington in that same 2018 season. While watching the replays of those games and seeing the images of the coaches celebrating the good tries scored, what jumps out is the presence in the group of former Golden Lions coach Swys de Bruin.

De Bruin was there as a co-opted backline and attack coach, and when you listen to him talk on television about what the Boks should be doing but are not, it is clear what may be missing from both the coaching and the necessary debate within the management.

Proper attack coaching has always come across as a bit of an afterthought in SA rugby. In that regard it was interesting to hear Stormers coach John Dobson explain his recruitment of Manny Libbok to be an attacking flyhalf on the basis of what Libbok had done when former All Black coach John Mitchell, who is a very astute attack coach, was in charge at the Bulls.

As long as there is no dedicated, specialised attack coach at the Boks, attack will remain what it appears to be at the moment: an afterthought. And attempts to vary play by running the ball may continue to look awkward rather than reflect innovative thinking and coherent planning. Attack requires coaching as much as defence does.