Not a case of black and White for Springboks
There’s a strong belief that last weekend’s victory is the beginning of a revival but the coach was at pains yesterday to dampen the nation’s ardour. Instead he expects Eddie O’Sullivan’s side to pose a greater challenge in Newlands on Saturday.
“I certainly think this one will be a tougher game,” said the former Springbok underage coach. “A lot of people said that we didn’t play together for a while, but they hadn’t played rugby as a team since the end of the Six Nations which is a long, long time ago. This week they’ll obviously be wounded and I have no doubt that the conditions at Newlands will suit them a lot better.
“To be fair also, they didn’t have much video footage to work on from our team so they couldn’t spend much time doing homework on us. This week they’ll probably look at the video and see a few things they can pull at.”
White has also been doing his homework. He offered some interesting thoughts on Ireland’s possible new centre combination of Brian O’Driscoll and Kevin Maggs.
“I think there’s a big difference between Maggs and D’Arcy. Maggs is very much stronger, he runs straight and he might not ask as many questions of the defence as D’Arcy would,” he said.
“He’s not as quick as D’Arcy but what you lose on one you gain on the other. We’re probably going to have to be a little more tight on the crash ball coming through the middle.”
The weekend saw England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland all surrender to southern hemisphere opposition, but White believes that there hasn’t been another shift in the balance of world rugby.
Rather, the articulate South African believes that the results are due to timing, with the northern hemisphere sides at the end of a hectic season. “When you play at the end of the season it’s much more difficult to get results. We see it when the northern hemisphere sides play southern hemisphere sides in November. You see teams like England and Ireland beating South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. You’ve got to take it into context. Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland are at the end of their season, the players are tired. The Irish players are already saying that this is their last game of the year and they’re aware that it’s the last hurdle and it’s difficult to get yourselves up for that.”
White will name his team for the second test this afternoon and it appears that, bar the possible re-introduction of Percy Montgomery at full-back, there won’t be many changes to last weekend’s selection.
“You try and keep the team as close as you can to the same. They haven’t played much together and you don’t want to chop and change it.
“Bearing that in mind, players who weren’t picked need to be brought into the system because we’re not only playing this match, we’ve got a few more to go. We’ve got to get to the stage where we have a unified side by the time we play New Zealand.”
Ireland will also name their side after training this afternoon, and it’s expected that O’Sullivan will go with Maggs in place of D’Arcy.
Meanwhile, Wales coach Mike Ruddock is demanding face-to-face talks with Donal Courtney after the Irish referee’s performance in the 44-50 loss to Argentina in Tucuman on Saturday, writes Angus Morrison in Buenos Aires.
Ruddock questioned Courtney’s interpretation in several areas, and while he had no problems with the first-half sin-binning of skipper Colin Charvis, he felt several Pumas players should have suffered the same fate.
“The referee didn’t manage the tackle area as well as he should have and we’d like to talk to him about that,” he said.
“They slowed a lot of our ball down for about 25 minutes, and it was a bit harsh for Colin to be sin-binned on our first offence, but it was a clear penalty.
“There are several things I want to talk to Courtney about. He’s an excellent referee, but it’s only right that he clarify several issues.
“We want to make sure there is consistency.”
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