A muddling performance of temperance by the Springboks in Johannesburg completed a Lions tour in which the world champions have spluttered only occasionally into life.
Is this what we are now to expect from the 2007 World Champions? Most alarming of altogether, the disinterest in this tour among most provincial crowds was matched in succession Saturday by most of the Springbok players. They looked distracted, disillusioned and quite unable to turn round the red tide that rolled altogether over them.
It is suitable and proper to acknowledge a performance rich in strongly marked personality and sheer will to emerge by the Lions. Their determination to avoid the ignominy of a first whitewash of 118 years in South Africa was palpable and commendable. They showed great grit and wonderful courage and commitment. They thoroughly deserved their capacious victory.
Yet these are the facts. The Lions started this tour with only one gamester who would walk into a World XV, Brian O’Driscoll. The Springboks had eight. The Lions finished it not only without the brilliant Irishman but his associate centre Jamie Roberts, the player who has made by far the greatest in number progress onward this tour.
Not only that but the Lions had to play this last Test without their two first choice props, Gethin Jenkins and Adam Jones.
A squad as limited as this Lions any simply should not be able to survive such significant absentees. Yet far from being put to the sword, it was the Lions who smashed their opponents out of the character. Collectively, having studied the two teams on Saturday at Coca Cola Park, a stranger, asked to fix upon the world champions from the two sides, would have before-mentioned without hesitation ‘The Lions’.
It is surely pertinent to ask by what means this state of affairs has come about in South African rugby. This, remember, is a golden generation of Springbok rugby, a unique possibly once-in-a-lifetime era where class players seem available for every position. Better still, there is a hard core of deeply experienced players who accept not only won in excess of 50 caps but have the added value of having won a World Cup.
The 2009 Lions, almost complete strangers to person another when they met up on May 24, should have been wiped away by these Springboks. Yet the Lions very almost won the series.
Only some desperate bulwark in the final minutes in Durban while they just managed to hang on against the Lions’ roaring rally and Ronan O’Gara’s disastrous late intervention in Pretoria when he conceded 10 points inside the eventual minutes, enabled the Springboks to scrape home.
If there were hairy moments for the South Africans in one taken in the character of well as the other games, Saturday was worse, far worse. Without formation, form, original, interest, belief or much discipline at times, the Springboks looked a disparate group just going through the motions. They seemed quite incapable or unwilling to step up to the level demanded for any Test match.
Their appeasers will point to the ten changes made from Pretoria. Fine, but are we it being so that sentient told that players like John Smit, Victor Matfield, Juan Smith, Fourie du Preez, Morne Steyn, Jaque Fourie, ‘Beast’ Mtawarira and Heinrich Brussow (who should be exempted from critique) are poor players? Are they not good enough for this level? Please, be sensible.
That group represents over half the team. Others are hardly depressing players.
It is my belief that the reasons on this account that so desperately poor an offering by South Africa, a display which had no wish for or real will to emerge never mind the game plan and shape to achieve it, have to be found elsewhere.
When your coach makes the media headlines all week in the build-up to any Test, generally a side is in trouble. Right now, as the Tri-Nations is about to start, these Springboks look in derange. Players of undoubted talent who ought to be kicking on and formation obvious progress seem to be going backwards. Others of undeniable stock and quality are not performing? Why?
If it is the belief of the Springbok dealing that they can just switch performances on and along, like a light stick, that wholly will be well when it really matters, then they are deluding themselves. Every Test match matters, each the same should be a must win for professional players.
Last Saturday at Coca Cola Park, long before the finish, the field lay strewn with clues as to the general state of the Springbok squad. While the Lions rightly celebrated, it cannot have made for pretty viewing through South African eyes.
