Right, the Springboks have made the worst possible start to their build-up for the defence of their World Cup crown.
They were hammered by Australia in Sydney on Saturday and prospects of a change in fortunes, against New Zealand this weekend, are not good. The Boks are bruised and battered, nursing injuries in the crucial second row, and the players and coaching staff will be asking themselves plenty of questions.
Yet, among all the bad news, there is also good news. And that is that Peter de Villiers, Gary Gold and Dick Muir will have learned valuable lessons from Saturday’s defeat. Yes, it is a cliché and the first term used by players and coaches when a team loses, but it is also a fact.
Last weekend when the Lions nearly lost to the Pumas in a Currie Cup game, John Mitchell said it would not have helped one bit had his team scored a runaway win against the Pumas; especially not in the first game of the competition. You see, when teams do everything right and score tries at will, you don’t get an opportunity to pin-point faults in the make-up or see where you need to strengthen and work.
On Saturday in Kimberley the Lions were just about flawless in downing Griquas and now, having played two games, Mitchell and the players know all too well where their strengths are and what works for them and they also know what doesn’t work for them. They can now take the good and build on that for the rest of the competition.
It’s the same with the Boks. Their first outing of the year was one to forget, but we’ll better be able to judge them after this weekend against New Zealand once they’ve been given a chance to eradicate their faults and weaknesses. They will now know what needs to be worked on and fixed ... something you just can’t pinpoint on the training ground. So we’ll get a far better indication of where the Boks are in 2011 after this weekend and then after the home leg of the Tri-Nations as well.
Of course, everything depends on the coaching staff and the players, who need to own up to mistakes made and also be prepared to change things, if things need changing.
We must also remember this is a young team on tour, with not many of the combinations having played together before. I’m not making excuses – Saturday’s was a poor Bok performance – but let’s remember Australia’s B team were also poor against Samoa ... and they seem to have learnt a great deal from that experience. The Boks will, hopefully, do the same. - The Star