Time for Bok backline to fire
In four Rugby Championship matches this season, the Bok backs have failed to match their competition counterparts.
|||Change or no change at nine and 10 - the Springbok backs simply have to deliver against the Wallabies on Saturday.
In four Rugby Championship matches this season, the Bok backs have failed to match their competition counterparts, with only veteran star Bryan Habana and fullback Johan Goosen keeping the opposition guessing.
In all, the Boks have scored just eight tries, with Goosen and Habana both getting two each, with the only other back on the try-scorers list being the injured wing Ruan Combrinck.
For what it’s worth, the All Blacks have scored a whopping 24 tries so far, with their backs getting 17 of those.
Goosen and Habana are second in the competition for the number of clean breaks, while the fullback is fifth overall for ‘defenders beaten’, with nine and he’s also sixth for ‘running metres’, with 226m.
As a unit, the Boks’ attacking play has been woefully lacking, with Allister Coetzee’s side making only 19 clean breaks (to New Zealand’s 31), and 27 offloads (to New Zealand’s 44). And it’s not as if they’re not winning ruck ball to play with; the Boks leading the ruck success category with a win rate of 96 percent.
Disappointingly, no Boks feature in the top 10 lists for ball carries and offloads.
In an effort to jack up the Bok effort, Coetzee is today expected to pick a new-look half-back pairing, possibly Rudy Paige and Morne Steyn, but it could just as easily be Francois Hougaard and Pat Lambie. But even if it was still Faf de Klerk and Elton Jantjies - the pair who’ve played the majority of minutes in the Boks’ seven Tests this year - there’d still be a big push to get the Bok back division firing.
Coetzee is spot on when he says: “The set pieces are coming along nicely and, physically, we’ll never lose or be shunted around, but it’s from nine to 15 where the Boks need to stand tall this weekend.
Under Johan van Graan and Matt Proudfoot, the Boks’ scrums and line-outs have functioned well - and that with both first choice tighthead props Frans Malherbe and Julian Redelinghuys missing in Australasia, and Lood de Jager missing out against the All Blacks - while the loose-trio of Warren Whiteley, Oupa Mohoje and Francois Louw has also grown as the competition’s gone on.
But starting with the half-backs through to the back three the Boks have been lacking, in attack and in defence.
There has been talk in the build-up to today’s team announcement for the match that Goosen will lose his place to the recalled Willie le Roux, but that would seem hardly fair on Goosen if the statistics are to be believed. While the Racing Metro star has made a few blunders, he’s been one of the better attacking players in the back division, while Le Roux was axed not so long ago because he was making mistake after mistake.
But not only will the spotlight be on the men Coetzee entrusts to stop a three-match losing run this Saturday, but also on assistant coaches Mzwandile Stick (backs coach) and Chean Roux (defence coach).
Both men have rightly copped plenty of criticism in recent weeks for the Boks’ poor backline play and their efforts in defence, but as Proudfoot said this week, they’ll be their own biggest critics.
Saturday’s Test at Loftus, is one where the backs simply have to deliver. If they don’t, there’s every chance they’ll end the Rugby Championship with just the one victory, a less-than-convincing win against Los Pumas in Nelspruit.
The Star