Jacques Nienaber’s warning to Leinster over ‘copy and pasting’ Springboks success

Jacques Nienaber says that he will not be employing the same defensive system with Leinster that he implemented with the Springboks.

Nienaber has linked up with the Irish province after guiding South Africa to their fourth Rugby World Cup title.

The South African is widely regarded as one of the best defence gurus in the game, with his systems playing a crucial role in the Boks winning back-to-back World Cups and a British and Irish Lions series.

During his six-year tenure with the national team, the Boks‘ defence was incredibly difficult to break down with the likes of Makazole Mapimpi, Cheslin Kolbe and Kurt-Lee Arendse flying up off their wings to shut down threatening attacks, with a lot of onus on outside centres to drift or shoot up to do the same.

Leinster’s defence under Nienaber

There is a lot of excitement around Nienaber’s arrival in Dublin and there are hopes that he will instil similar defensive strategies, but the tactician revealed that will not be the case because of the different cultures, personalities, and abilities of the playing squad.

“Let me start this way, I don’t think you can copy and paste because of the skillset, and the athletic ability that the South African players had is different to the Leinster players,” he explained.

“The athletic profile here is different, and the skillsets are different.

“That’s probably the frustrating part for me, to find out where the skillset of this group is, and they do have certain skillsets that are better than what we had in South Africa. Some of them have better athletic profiles and vice versa.”

He added: “So, the key thing for me is to find out what we have and how we can utilise that with a system that I have in my head. It won’t necessarily be the way that we defended with South Africa, or with Munster for that matter.

“If you look at how we defended with South Africa and with Munster, it wasn’t the same.”

Secret to success

In recent seasons, Leinster have fallen short in the big games, losing to La Rochelle in the 2021 Champions Cup semi-final before back-to-back final defeats in the subsequent two editions of the competition.

They have also failed to win the first two editions of the United Rugby Championship, losing in the semi-finals on both occasions.

Meanwhile, South Africa won each of their 2023 World Cup knockout matches at the World Cup by a single point.

There is hope among Leinster fans that Nienaber’s arrival in Dublin will get the side over the line in the big games, but he explained that there is no quick solution.

“Sometimes you just need a little bit of luck,” he said.

“Sometimes you just need a big play, a charge down in a quarter-final from Cheslin Kolbe, and you win the game by a point. Sometimes it goes your way and sometimes not, and I know that’s not what people want to hear, but I mean, that is the reality.

“The thing is, in big games, it’s going to be that tight, and you must try and play the big points well, if I can put it like that, and you must try and nail the big points.

“Hopefully I can add value to that, but there is no silver bullet.”

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