Springboks legend: The ‘worrying stat’ about South Africa’s defence that has been ‘massively exposed’
Springboks full-back Aphelele Fassi attempts a tackle on Australia's Corey Toole and an inset of ex-flanker Schalk Burger.
Legendary Springboks flanker Schalk Burger is concerned about the number of tackles Rassie Erasmus’ men missed during the two matches against the Wallabies.
After two rounds of Rugby Championship action, South Africa boasts the lowest tackle success rate of the four nations at a measly 80.7%, 3.3% worse than the All Blacks, with Australia (87.9%) and Argentina (87.5%) in first and second, respectively.
The Springboks‘ two Rugby World Cup successes have been inspired by their defence, which was led by Jacques Nienaber, with Irishman Jerry Flannery taking over the role since the beginning of last year.
Tony Brown has also taken over the attacking structures of the side following the World Cup, with South Africa looking to play far more expansively and with more attacking intent.
However, this has produced mixed results, particularly in this year’s Rugby Championship, with Australia romping to an impressive 38-22 victory in Johannesburg, but the Boks shifted their tactics in Cape Town, backing a far more conservative approach in the Mother City, and it paid dividends.
Balancing act
The challenge for the Springboks and head coach Erasmus now is marrying the traditional strengths with the evolution of the team, as detailed by former prop Hanyani Shimange on The Verdict podcast.
“It’s a balance of the two,” he replied when asked if it’s time to bin Tony Brown or back the more conservative approach.
“When Pollard gets the ball, you get broken field, or Cheslin chases it down, it’s unstructured play.
“So, there’s going to be an element of chaos in the game. There’s going to be an element of control. I think what’s happened is that we’ve probably taken a lot away from our mauling, which is our strength.
“Our scrum is not as dominant as it used to be – that’s where we got the power, the control. Then you can kick downfield, and you’ve got multiple opportunities to attack, attack, attack.
“Defensively, we are in between a rush and guys maybe staying connected and maybe slowing it down a bit. We’re leaking tries probably too easily. So there are some of the core strengths, the fundamentals: a strong set-piece, dominant defence, and defensive options need to be very good.
“What I find now is that with our defence, it’s allowing the opposition in, but I think our kicking game was strong, our aerial skills are still out of the Rugby Championship, probably the best.”
Worrying Springboks stat
Burger agreed that the defence is a problem area for the Boks and is particularly concerned by the number of individual errors from players in the defensive line.
Still, he was happy with the balance on attack from the second Test in comparison to the first.
“We went from last week, where we moved away from kicking, although that suited us perfectly in the beginning, the first six contestables came our way, and we kicked 18 in total. This weekend, we doubled that number, we were up to 35, and the kick-pass ratio last week was 12:1 – this week it was 3:1,” Burger began.
“In both Test matches, Australia’s stats look exactly the same. Same amount of rugby, same balance to their side. The worrying stat for us is the number of tackles we miss. It’s not only systemic errors, but also individual errors putting people away. And often when you do that, we’ve all been in teams where you just sort of caught in two minds.
“Like back in the day when we were good, it doesn’t matter if that loop happened 15m back, we were up and we chased him. We fetched them behind the gain-line. If they were willing to get that ball away 15m behind the gain-line, our scrambled defence was there in place to put the next man away.
“You’ll see in clips Jesse Kriel goes, but not everyone’s on the same page. And then our backfield feels massively exposed at the moment.”
The Springboks now head to New Zealand for back-to-back matches against the All Blacks, the first taking place at Eden Park and the second in Wellington – two fixtures that will undoubtedly play a massive role in the final outcome of the tournament.
