Analysis: Kolisi, Jantjies key to Bok revival

Editor

South Africa are undefeated in 2017. Sure, they’ve only played two games, but after a 2016 season where they lost to Wales, England, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina – winning just four of 11 games (36 percent) it’s a hugely promising opening.

We’re in danger of falling into the realm of cliché, but international rugby is all about results, and so performing well but losing isn’t good enough.

Even so, South Africa wouldn’t have been able to take solace from those kinds of tight defeats last year. They were heavily beaten both home and away against New Zealand in 2016 – in Durban, the All Blacks scored 57 points off the back of 40 missed tackles and just 148m for the Springboks, a sorry performance from the home side. They never won another game in 2017 after that.

2017 has been a completely different story, they’ve won twice despite being on the back foot in both games. They’ve been asked to make at least 150 tackles in both, 41 percent is the highest rate of possession they’ve achieved and in the most recent game they won just 41 rucks.

Despite this, they’re just a handful of metres shy of 1,000, they’ve beaten 39 defenders, and have mustered 28 clean breaks across the pair of tests. During this article we’ll look at how South Africa are beginning to find their form and why Elton Jantjes and Siya Kolisi are the heartbeat of this team.

Siya Kolisi

For anyone who doesn’t follow Super Rugby it would be perfectly acceptable that the phenomenon that is Siya Kolisi had passed you by. After all, the back-row has only played 18 tests for South Africa, starting just five – ten of those games came back in the 2013 season.

He became the Stormers’ captain at the start of the year and he has produced some fantastic results so far, making 108 tackles with a 90 percent tackle rate and averaging four metres per carry. Without context those numbers don’t mean a lot, but trust me, they indicate firstly a high work-rate. And secondly, almost nobody gets into a position to make that many tackles and is also that effective with the ball in their hands.

The above clip shows an outcome, and it’s a very special one. Kolisi shows amazing hands to drag in the interception, great balance to not just fall flat on his face, and fantastic pace to make it to the line for the try. However, the reason he’s here in the first place is because of his work rate. The clearing kick came from around the Springbok 22m line and Kolisi is the first one there.

Yet another example of his work-rate, Raymond Rhule goes straight through the hole off the lineout. Despite the winger’s speed, Kolisi is right there on his shoulder the entire way, when he does get the ball, the French defence has scrambled successfully but he’s able to ensure the tackle doesn’t put France on the front foot.

Another thing to note is that Jan Serfontein plays first receiver at the lineout, the coaching team have chosen to bring Jantjes into the game on second phase and beyond when there’s more space to attack.

Work-rate isn’t just about chasing kicks and running support lines, it’s also about making the extra effort to turn a good play into a great one. In the above example he makes the hit, but keeps driving and although the French player rides the tackle he’s straight into the jaws of the Bok defence and they get the turnover.

He gets another turnover, with the significant help of Eben Etzebeth, in this clip. Bernard le Roux probably realised very soon that running into Etzebeth and Kolisi isn’t the best idea, as the Bok flanker drove him back and then threw him down as soon as the maul was called, resulting in turnover ball.

Yet another turnover above. This isn’t because of his work-rate, this is just superior technique. He gets so low over the ball, along with his two team mates, that the French just can’t get close to moving him.

We have focused largely on his defence so far, but his attack is sublime. He’s one of three people in the French Test series who have run for more than 200 metres – with 232 – and he’s the only one of those three who isn’t a French winger or centre. Clearly you don’t get yardage like that by just running around the fringes, but when Kolisi is asked to do that he racks up the metres as well.

He’s a bullocking runner who doesn’t go down on the first contact. This is a nightmare for defences because it forces them to add more players into the tackle, which makes offloads much more effective and opens up the game for the next phase.

In this penultimate example below, we can see that, despite doing this identical move off seemingly every lineout in the game, South Africa continued to make yardage and get over the gain-line. It might not look pretty, but the ability to get that kind of penetration off first phase is hugely valuable.

Last example, this links quite nicely into the second section about Jantjes. There seems to be a fundamental change in how South Africa play and that revolves around pushing quicker flankers to the wing.

That only works if these players have the hands to exploit the overlaps and Kolisi does this perfectly in this example, he keeps the outside defence interested and then cuts back against the grain to create the try.

Elton Jantjies

I can tell you one way that Jantjies career might end up going. He might be seen as a ‘maverick’; because of his kicking, his relatively small stature, his lack of defensive dominance, and, his hair.

A nice-to-have player when you want to change the game up, but not somebody you can stick in against the best of the world when you need a solid performer.

I have a lot of admiration for Jantjies, he was the first player I ever wrote about for Planet Rugby, and as a former undersized fly-half myself, I like to think that it was geographic location rather than skill which prevented me playing at international level….

You’re going to see a lot of this whenever you watch Jantjies, he likes to drift across the pitch. Going sideways isn’t inherently bad, it’s only an issue if you eat up the space outside, if, as in the example above, you do it to draw defenders out and create a big hole for your centre to go through, nobody will complain.

The same thing happens in the above clip, he doesn’t drift as much but he’s not fixing the defenders by going forwards. Instead, he fixes the outside defenders by flicking his wrists to dummy the ball. It stalls them for less than a second, but that makes a difference and it’s what stops the support coming across to prevent the try at the end.

The final example of this, and again Jantjies is drifting laterally but fixing defenders because he keeps the switch option always open. It’s not a big gain, but it’s enough to push them over the gain-line and keep the Boks moving forward.

Jantjies doesn’t get much credit for his defence, on account of his size probably, but he’s not bad. He made ten tackles against France on Saturday, and eight the previous week, missing just two in the process. Nobody would teach their kid to tackle like Jantjes, but you can’t deny it’s effective – as in the above clip.

This tackle reminds me about what everyone says about karate, about how to use your opponents strength to beat them. If the fly-half tries to drive François Trinh-Duc back there’s a good chance he misses it, but just haul him forwards over the top of you and make it anyway. You sacrifice some macho points for doing this, but a 95 percent tackle success rate is pretty macho.

So, he can tackle, he can distribute, and he can run if he needs to. In the above example, there’s nothing on out wide so he puts his head down and glides through the defence. The ending isn’t pretty, but he’s got them over the gain-line.

This example is exactly the same, Guilhem Guirado tees off on Jantjes but it’s a brave run which again, puts South Africa going forward. The Springbok fly-half proves that, if needed to, he can put his head down and smack into the line, he’s certainly not afraid of contact.

Jantjies actually got his own back on the French front row when he stripped Rabah Slimani on his own line – he gave away 22kg to the Stade Français prop.

He might not be a natural tackler, but he is a natural kicker and it’s a huge weapon for the Boks. In the above example he sends a huge towering kick way into the French half. The chase is good and the return kick poor, resulting in a massive gain in yardage for the side.

As you would expect from a mercurial player, Jantjies has an exquisite chip on him. This penultimate example is absolutely perfect, it’s disguised wonderfully so the French can’t back up and close down the space and it’s flat enough to prevent the French winger from getting across to close his man down. Ultimately, it doesn’t come to anything but that’s not due to Elton.

Finally, this kick doesn’t work but it’s a delicate little chip which turns the defense and puts them under huge pressure. It’s this kind of attack which will become more popular as defences get harder to breakdown and the spaces open up behind.

Conclusion

It’s crucial that South Africa improve as a team, with Australia fading, World Rugby can’t afford to carry a sub-par South Africa as well. There’s still a very very long way to go, but the initial signs are promising that a comeback may be on.

The pressure won’t squarely sit on the shoulders of Jantjies and Kolisi, but they will be crucial in both improving what’s on the pitch and inspiring the next generation of South African youngsters to take up the sport. For anyone who doesn’t have anything invested in the future of the Springboks, you will at least get to see some hugely exciting rugby – as long as the team can continue playing like they have so far in 2017.

The final example shows the duo working in perfect harmony, something we should be seeing a lot more of in the lead up to Japan 2019.

by Sam Larner