It is always fun for South Africans to watch their team rack up tries as if they are going out of fashion but no-one will be fooled into thinking that Sunday’s rampage against Romania will have much relevance to this weekend’s huge showdown with Ireland.
In Bordeaux there was a lot of experimentation from Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber as he searches for answers to some complex questions that have been raised subsequent to the win over Scotland in their opening game.
With the World Cup champions having suffered a huge blow with the injury that has forced Malcolm Marx to leave the World Cup, Nienaber used two players who now play most of their rugby on the flank in the all important hooker position. Bongi Mbonambi, who led the team, was the only specialist hooker, with Deon Fourie moving into the front row as his replacement at the start of the second half and then Marco van Staden finishing there.
Both players did well against Romania, but by the time the second half started the Boks were already 33-0 ahead. That meant there was little pressure on those two players and it effectively amounted to a practice match.
Ireland are one of the best, if not the best, team in the world regarding contesting the line-outs, and they will be sure to create a lot of pressure next week on Fourie’s throwing.
It seems likely Fourie will fulfil the backup hooker role in this huge clash between the world’s top two ranked teams because were the coaches intending to bring a player in from outside, they would surely have done that by now.
We are hearing that flyhalf Handré Pollard is on his way to France as Marx’s replacement. That would make sense if he was coming in for a backup player, but hooker is a specialist position and it is a huge risk to play a makeshift player there in an important game.
Warrior spirit
Yes, I hear the argument that Fourie is well acquainted with hooker. He did play his early career there and racked up something like 150 games in that position. However, it is not a position he had played at a high level for a long time before Sunday, and Stormers coach John Dobson has said often in the past that he would only consider Fourie for hooker were it a dire emergency situation.
There is also the matter of like-for-like replacements. Fourie is the warrior that people say he is. He is the Rassie Erasmus and Nienaber embodiment of the warrior spirit that they look for in a player. However, he is not a ball carrier like Marx, and there will be a shift in the bomb squad set-up that helped the Boks win the World Cup in Japan in 2019. Fourie brings mobility and he is the pain in the butt to the opposition at the breakdown that an openside flank is supposed to be, and an openside flank is what I think he is nowadays, but he doesn’t bring the power that makes the six/two split between forwards and backs on the bench successful for the South Africans.
That is not to denigrate Fourie, who is a fine player and a very committed and brave one, just an acknowledgment that the coaches are taking a huge risk if they don’t call up a specialist hooker. Joseph Dweba is more of a Marx-style ball carrier than Fourie is. And what happens if Mbonambi is injured early in a big game, like he was in the 2019 World Cup final? The Boks had Marx coming on in that clash, which was a much more seamless switch than it will be if it happens now.
Calling up a flyhalf for a hooker also creates a potential additional problem in the sense that it doesn’t send out a good message to Manie Libbok, who outside his goal-kicking has exceeded expectations in the way he has gained confidence as an international flyhalf. And if injury forces Dweba to join the squad later in the tournament, how confident will he be knowing that when the top hooker was injured the coaches called for a flyhalf replacement instead?
I did write a few weeks back that Pollard might be being lined up for a Morné Steyn-type role, meaning the one the veteran No 10 played in the British & Irish Lions series, where he was effectively there to kick the clutch goals late in pressure games. Pollard could conceivably come on at centre, with Libbok’s big strength, his ambidextrousness, meaning his ability to pass both ways equally effectively and kick with both feet, then being retained.
Whichever way you look at it though the Marx injury was a shattering blow and it has given rise to many complex questions that can only be answered in a pressure game against the likes of Ireland rather than in a lighthearted romp against lowly Romania.
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