TALKING POINT: Taking hits is part of the process in Bok evolution

About 36 hours after Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus had faced a press conference in Auckland following his team’s defeat at Eden Park, another top sports personality who had sustained a loss was doing the same thing in distant New York.

Kevin Sinner won Wimbledon by beating Carlos Alcaraz two months ago but now, like in the French Open before that, the tables had been turned.

Both are far ahead of the rest of the world’s tennis players, and victory over Alcaraz has been recent enough for most not to have forgotten it, and yet Sinner spoke at his press conference as if he needed to completely reinvent himself to stay in touch with the man who beat him in the US Open final.

“I was very predictable today on the court in the way he did many things and changed up the game,” said Sinner. “That’s also his style of how he plays. Now it’s going to be on me if I want to make the changes or not. Definitely we are going to work on that.”

Sinner continued by saying that in order to reinvent himself so he could match Alcaraz’s adaptability, he was going to have to accept that he might lose some matches in the foreseeable future while he goes through the process of making changes “because that’s what I have to do to become a better tennis player.”

SA’s REINVENTION STARTED A WHILE BACK

Remind you of the Boks? It does me. Only the Bok reinvention isn’t just starting now, it arguably started to happen when they started to run the ball back at France in Marseille in 2022.

A year later, in Paris, the change to carrying the ball more and being more prepared to venture with their attacking game bore fruit as otherwise they would not have been able to keep in touch with France on the scoreboard during a first half where the hosts were mostly dominant.

The Boks had scraps of possession in that period, but made enough of it to respond to France’s three tries by scoring three of their own.

Later in the piece, when the French were tiring and realised their assault had been blunted, the Boks proved their adaptability by applying their more traditional suffocating forward orientated game and Handre Pollard came on to kick the winning points.

Since then, with the arrival of Tony Brown as the attack coach, the Bok attempts to evolve to a point where they can hurt teams in so many more ways than used to be the case have gathered pace. And perhaps, like Sinner is preparing to do now, they have taken some hits in the process.

In their quest to impress with their more multi-dimensional approach, they ran themselves off their own feet in Johannesburg against Australia.

That was a big hit against the Boks, for conceding 38 unanswered points was obviously going to be a big blow to what had been a hitherto all-conquering team’s confidence. They arguably are still struggling to recover.

FIRST QUARTER IN JOBURG SHOWED THE POTENTIAL

However, you can ask Joe Schmidt, the well travelled Wallaby head coach, about what the Boks might achieve if, or rather when, they have evolved to a point where they are getting Tony-ball, as some call it, spot on.

He reckons the first 20 minutes of that Ellis Park game, where the Boks went into a 22-0 lead, was as good a window of rugby as he’s ever seen from the South Africans. And few would disagree with that assessment.

There are hits that the Boks are taking and will continue to take as they try to evolve their game. The reliance on four man lineouts is part of the attack orientation that may have undermined what was previously a phase of play that the Boks were always near perfect at.

The lineouts are a problem, make no mistake, and maybe some adjustment needs to be made because there can be no denying the role the errors made in Auckland played in making it a highly frustrating 80 minutes for South African fans.

Yet there also has to be acknowledgement, as there has been from Sinner, who remains Alcaraz’s nearest challenger and even if he relinquishes his No 1 spot in the rankings will remain comfortably in the top two for the foreseeable future, that change and seamless transition don’t go together.

FOUR LOSSES SINCE RWC NOT A DISASTER

And here’s the thing - the Wallaby aberration aside, the Bok performances since Brown became involved haven’t led to a slide for the world champions. Last year they lost just twice, and this past weekend they played poorly and yet still came close at a venue where the All Blacks haven’t lost in 31 years.

No, we shouldn’t reverse the clock now and start celebrating narrow defeats. Eden Park was a lost opportunity. It is not something the Boks should laugh off and neither will they.

But let’s also be realistic - the wins over the All Blacks on South African soil last year weren’t by big scores and the performances weren’t perfect. And it wasn’t as if they swept to their second consecutive Rugby World Cup title with comprehensive victories - all three of their playoff wins were by a solitary point.

The Boks were criticised for their conservative game plan in the 2019 RWC in Japan and it probably cost them in the opening game loss to the All Blacks in Yokohama. Remember that game?

The Boks won the forward battle that night and quite comprehensively so but lost because the All Blacks, by scoring quick tries in succession, built their score in increments of five rather than three. The Boks look better equipped to play catch up against the All Blacks now than they did then.

The Boks surprised England by being more willing to carry the ball in the 2019 final, but to reach that final they had to rely on a clutch kick from Handre Pollard to win a pretty awful semifinal against a not particularly good Wales team.

When they perfect what they are working towards now the Boks will be less slave to the fate of refereeing error and bad luck and they will win more games in the imperious fashion that they were building towards in the opening quarter in Joburg. South Africans, and maybe Rassie himself, just need to have patience.

It is true that if they lose a couple of games and the many haters of the Boks and their coach will come out of their hiding places, but there’s truth in that old saying that he who laughs last laughs the longest.