Boks can beat the All Blacks

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND - SEPTEMBER 13: Cornal Hendricks of the Springboks makes a break on his way to scoring a try during The Rugby Championship match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the South Africa Springboks at Westpac Stadium on September 13, 2014 in Wellington, New Zealand. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND - SEPTEMBER 13: Cornal Hendricks of the Springboks makes a break on his way to scoring a try during The Rugby Championship match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the South Africa Springboks at Westpac Stadium on September 13, 2014 in Wellington, New Zealand. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Published Sep 15, 2014

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The Springboks don’t know how good they really are, and to get to the point where they have absolute belief in their ability and their game plan, they need to make a mindset shift to overcome any possible psychological concerns.

The Boks were some way off their best in both defeats to the Wallabies and All Blacks, especially in Perth. Yet they lost by a point in their first tour match, and four points in the second at the Westpac Stadium in Wellington.

Now imagine if they had real conviction that they are better than Australia and New Zealand? Perhaps you can only develop that trait if you actually beat your opponents, but Saturday’s 14-10 defeat to the All Blacks will, hopefully, have flicked a switch in coach Heyneke Meyer’s head.

If you go through a list of top Boks who were unavailable either through injury or club commitments, then you realise that there is almost another full team who Meyer can’t pick at the moment.

There was no Fourie du Preez, Schalk Burger, Frans Steyn, Jaque Fourie, JP Pietersen and Willem Alberts on the Westpac Stadium pitch – and those are contenders for the starting line-up. Add a few others who could possibly be on the bench or in a 30-man squad – here we are talking about Frans Malherbe, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Arno Botha, Juan Smith, Coenie Oosthuizen and others who are making their way back such as Siya Kolisi, Scarra Ntubeni and even overseas Boks like Gio Aplon, Johan Goosen and Andries Bekker, and you get the idea.

The All Blacks were missing first-choice players like Dan Carter, Jerome Kaino, Sam Whitelock and Tony Woodcock, and a few reserves such as Liam Messam, Sonny Bill Williams and Ryan Crotty.

So if a Bok team spearheaded by a 20-year-old rookie flyhalf in Handré Pollard can almost (and probably should’ve) beat New Zealand in New Zealand, then it bodes well for the future, and of course next year’s World Cup.

And part of that mindset shift that Meyer and his players need to embrace is the fact that they can take on the All Blacks with their own ball-in-hand attacking game.

The South Africans caused the All Blacks defence major problems when they kept possession and took the game to the world champions, but that happened far too infrequently on Saturday.

The Springboks couldn’t put together any semblance of phase-play, taking the ball up once or twice, and then inevitably knocking it on or losing it at the contact point.

The decision-making of scrumhalves Ruan Pienaar and Francois Hougaard also comes into question here, but those aimless box kicks aren’t only of their own doing – it is part of the game plan – but to be fair, the execution of those kicks have also been off the mark.

It is all having variety in your game and keeping the opposition guessing, and the Bok scrumhalves need only look at dynamic All Black No9 Aaron Smith to get an idea of what they should be doing.

Du Preez is able to match Smith with his service and decision-making, but is not as agile to test defenses. Hougaard is, and he needs to back himself like he used to when he burst on to the scene for the Bulls in Super Rugby.

Cobus Reinach is a similar type of player to Hougaard, and it was a real pity that he didn’t see any action Down Under. But now with Pienaar out of the tournament with a knee injury, the Sharks No9 should make his Bok debut in the two remaining home Rugby Championship Tests.

Cornal Hendricks made a salient point last week, stating that the Bok Sevens team had reached a point at one stage where they had become “just tired of putting people on a pedestal”, and that after years of losing to the Sevens All Blacks, things changed.

“We showed in Sevens that we could beat New Zealand because we showed them no respect,” Hendricks said.

There is no need for the Springboks to stand back to anyone in world rugby. The All Blacks are not super athletes from another planet, and the Boks can beat them – regularly – if they play to their full potential.

It’s high time that they start believing it themselves, and break down the aura of the All Blacks. - The Star

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