The Stuff of Champions

Saracens 24 South Africa 23

 

How to describe one of the greatest moment’s in Saracens’ history?  Draw a crowd of 46,000 to Wembley – no problem.  Beat the World Champions and vanquishers of the British Lions – of course, if Leicester can.  But to do so in a style that could put an end to several international careers, and prove the starting point for many more?  To come from behind twice, when the game seemed completely against them, to play enterprising rugby and to dominate the scrum of a famous rugby-playing nation?  Certainly, it was effectively a South Africa A-team, but this was worthy of being called championship-winning rugby.

The first quarter turned out to be an awkward, but end-to-end affair.  For Saracens, defence was primary and Wikus van Heerden led by example, stifling South African attacks.  Unfortunately, he was also typical of Sarries’ occasional attacks, guilty on several occasions of losing the ball in the tackle. The game turned after Derick Hougaard missed an ambitious kick to touch from a penalty.  They began to slip out of the game as South Africa’s greater speed of delivery,  physicality  and lineout began to wear.

First, Earl Rose (continuing a line of South African full-backs with flair) tried a back-hand flip that sat up interminably for Adrian Strauss to run on to.  Then, returning a kick as the crowd began to get restless, South Africa broke down the right wing, their huge lock trading passes with winger Ndungane before charging past Noah Cato, who grabbed hold more in hope than conviction.  The chasing referee signalled that the video referee was needed to judge the score.  Thankfully, Cato had done enough.

Saracens were still absorbing hits of such magnitude as to give the lie to the assumption that both sides would try to avoid injuries at the sacrifice of the spectacle.  Michael Tagicakibau was here an unlikely, but noteworthy hero.  It wasn’t enough.  When de Kock was forced to concede a lineout after a clever kick, South Africa took their chance, drawing in defenders with the forwards before getting the ball out to Juan de Jonge, who slipped through a tackle to dive over.

Fortune then favoured South Africa, when a kick from Rose was knocked on into the path of Jongi Nowke, who ran in the simplest of tries.  The referee had thought that it had come off a Saracens hand.  It was unfortunate, but it favoured the better team at the time and reflected a widening gap between the two sides.  The score, at 6-18 was frustrating, but not necessarily unfair.

Half time brought some relief, and no more than for the audience and a certain cheeky chappy, Stuart Tinner.  News of Tinner’s £250,000 kick and the lift it had given the crowd apparently filtered back to the dressing room.  If it had any effect, it encouraged Saracens to become masters of their own destiny again.

What was more significant was the introduction of Alex Goode at full-back and Rodd Penney for Cato.  These two players turned the game on its head, offering a more unpredictable spark.  First, though, it was the forwards who put Sarries back in the match.  Having dominated the scrum since CJ van der Linde went off early in the first half, Ernst Joubert put pressure of Francois Hougaard’s clearence from a defensive scrum, charged it down, and picked up to return the score to 11-18.

South Africa counter-attacked, but were halted by a superb ankle-tap by Rodd Penney and turned over.  When they kicked again, Tagicakibau secured the ball, allowing Saracens to run from just outside the 22.  The ball was worked to Brad Barritt, who stepped inside and offloaded to release Hougaard.  The fly-half’s chip put the underwhelming Ruan Pienaar under the pressure of Joubert’s chase.  In the next breath, Kevin Barrett, on for de Kock, passed out of the tackle and the ball was sped wide.  Another replacement, Andy Saull, offloaded inside for Penney to race ahead.

If Penney had been able to find Tagicakibau, Saracens would have been level, but they didn’t have to wait long.  A scrum ten metres out gave Barritt the perfect chance to play first-receiver and the combination of his leg-power and Penney’s upper-body strength drove the pair over.

With the scores equal, the game turned into South Africa’s favour again.  Losing a lineout on their 22, Saracens were hit by a swiftly-executed move that saw Ndungane’s forward pass release Nokwe for his second try.  But South Africa’s tendency to live on the margins, shall we say, let them down as the referee began to pick up on their forward passes, halting their attacks.

Meanwhile, the crowd had been roused by the pluckiness on display on the black half of the field.  In a game-defining moment, Hougaard was smashed backwards taking a pass on the loop by Wynard Olivier.  In the next passage of play, Hougaard returned the favour, stopping Olivier dead in his tracks (with a little help from Mouritz Botha). When Hougaard kicked another penalty to make the score 21-24 with ten minutes to go, their was a palpable sense that Sarries might have the final laugh.

Hougaard had been searching for a drop goal since Barritt had levelled the scores.  He had probably missed four or five from the half-way line over the course of the match, so when he tried again with five minutes remaining the crowd were perhaps justified in their chorus of boos.  But as the ball sailed ever so slowly through the posts, the cheers were considerably louder.

The Bokke had been out-fought, out-played and out-sung.  Though a development team, they apparently had less to prove than Saracens, whose ambition and hunger are fast changing the face of English club rugby.  The whole team had proved outstanding, even with a league derby against Wasps fast approaching.  In their desire for the Springbok scalp, Sarries produced one of the great performances in their history, but the way this season is shaping up, victory could prove neither a full-stop, nor even an exclamation mark.  Here’s hoping it’s a semi-colon, and the rest of the sentence is as good.

A Premature End

So far it’s taken several hours to get over the cumulative effect of several pints in tropical heat – now a literal and metaphorical storm – and the most disappointing rugby game I think I’ve ever seen.  Well, to be truthful, the game itself wasn’t a disappointment.  In fact, it has a claim, alongside the 2003 World Cup final and last week’s Test, to be one of the best games of rugby I’ve ever seen.  It’s still difficult to admit that it was a game of two halves, that South Africa offered at least as much as the tourists.  Could it have been otherwise?  

The first half was so perfect.  To be 10-0 up was all the Lions could have asked for in the first ten minutes, and a healthy return on their one-man advantage.  Lots of journalists will call for Schalk Burger’s blood, and indeed, there is a curious logic to sin-binning him for an offence that will certainly carry a suspension, probably for the Tri-Nations.  However, in a way, it was an offence that did not leave a large mark on the game.  Some blood was bound to boil over with stakes this high, and for the most part, it was to the detriment of South Africa, as the Lions soaked up the pressure.

The way the Lions drove the ball over the game-line and kept possession in the loose was sensational.  Everyone was constantly looking to offload – if Gethin Jenkins had successfully, the game could have played out differently.  Try as they might, South Africa just could not push Simon Shaw backwards.  In the wider-context of this series, perhaps the most important result is that the myth that the Southern Hemisphere has a monopoly on skillful rugby.

Over the course of the eighty-minutes, South Africa may have missed three penalties, but they outscored the Lions by three tries to one.  There’s two sides to that statistic.  The most obvious is that the Springboks cutting-edge was much sharper this week.  JP Pietersen took a sublime line on his way to their first-half score and Bryan Habana’s pace was finally of some use.  Moreover, as Stuart Barnes said (insightfully for once), he’s so dangerous without the ball.  

Jacques Fourie’s was controversial but the less obvious point when the Lions were making so many yards was that they were incapable of finding the line – the most significant turn-around from last week.  Therein lay the secret of South Africa’s success.  Last week they showed the physical intensity of their game.  This week, their backs were the difference.

Injuries took a huge toll on the Lions.  In five minutes (64-68), they lost Brian O’Driscoll and Jamie Roberts – the very spine of their team.  O’Driscoll had not had his best game, trying to force the pass too often, but in the tackle and most crucially in organising the defensive line he would have left the Lions below par.  

The loss of Roberts, without announcement due to injury, was equally tragic.  Without him there was no one to take the ball forward outside the forwards, which even if the Lions had been in the ascendancy would have deprived them of their bite.

Of Pride and Men

Where does this leave us?  Some will talk of scrapping the Lions as an institution altogether after seven consecutive Test defeats.  That would be a huge mistake, depriving us of the kind of phenomenal rugby we’ve just witnessed.  Moreover, the British and Irish Lions are an advert for the game in the Northern Hemisphere and an opportunity for the best players of the Home Nations to mix and learn from each other.

The trouble with this tour is that for so many players it will be their last.  That makes the chances of them taking their newfound passion and technique back with them much slimmer.  On the other hand, most of the coaches will and their role in making what was so nearly a dream team out this group of talented individuals could hardly be overplayed.

These brave Lions have fallen just the wrong side of immortality.  However, if Northern Hemisphere rugby emerges the stronger, it will not be in vain.

Second Chances

The Test Team for the Lions’ Second Test against South Africa has just been released, with five changes in total.  Scrum coach Graham Rowntree has almost made good on his threat to make changes in all three rows of the scrum, but McGeechan has restricted himself to two changes in the front-row, which will now be all-Welsh, and the introduction of Simon Shaw into the second.  While Matthew Rees and Adam Jones will add a technical dimension, Shaw’s inclusion is evidently all about ballast.  Hopefully the Boks will find it much more difficult to shift their maul with the twenty-stone, seven-foot giant pushing the other way.

Rob Kearney has come in for Lee Byrne, a shame for the latter, but not a particularly profound change.  However, Kearney will have to be very careful about kicking, or run the ball more than he is used to if he is going to prevent Steyn and Habana exerting pressure on the Lions.  There is still no certainty that Ronan O’Gara fits into the Lions ethos – unless Stephen Jones has a really poor game, I expect him to stay on the bench once again.  Replacing Monye with Luke Fitzgerard was not exactly an expected move, but it is a less risky decision than including Shane Williams from the start.  Fitzgerald is perfectly competent going forward and will link up well with Bowe if either come off their line.  However, I worry that he might struggle defending against Habana, who will, no doubt, be a stiffer challenge he was than last Saturday.  

Williams has achieved a victory of sorts in gaining a spot on the bench for the Test after a sodden game against the Emerging Springboks which yielded a poverty of chances.  In the First Test, Williams might have provided a real spark.  In those desperate last five minutes, it seemed that the Test could go either way.  While Monye doesn’t deserve blame for the teams failure to finish – Morne Steyn did exceptionally by any measure to deny him – having Shane Williams in the arsenal does put the Lions more in charge of their own destiny, provided that the score is still close and Roberts and O’Driscoll continue their practically legendary dismantling of the South African defence.

If only all that was needed was a more perfect run-through of the First Test!  Instead, the Lions will have to cope with a more alert and fitter defence, not to mention the most dominating pack in world rugby.  Some South African commentators considered the first half performance by the Springboks to be one of the most perfect in history.  I certainly agree with regard to John Smit’s try.  If the Lions have to face those waves of attacks over the course of eighty minutes, they will lose.  If however, they can control the game by winning their set-pieces, keeping the ball in the tackle (which they did brilliantly in the First Test) and putting points on the board, they have every chance to win.

 

O.D.:  Here’s something I just learnt about Simon Shaw – he is the only lock in the history of the English Premiership to score a drop goal (against Bath in 2000).  Jeremy Guscott considers him one of the best locks currently playing.  Putting two and two together, you get one million; that Shaw will repeat Guscott’s feat of twelve years ago, winning the Second Lions Test against South Africa with a drop goal.  At least, I reckon the odds are a million to one!