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'It's good': Why no referee rant from Springboks after latest loss

(Photo by Matt Roberts/Getty Images)

It’s amazing the difference seven weeks can make. Director of rugby Rassie Erasmus went on the warpath in the wake of the June 24 defeat for the Springboks against the Lions, querying a vast array of first Test refereeing decisions and complaining about the snail pace feedback after submitting clips for review. That outburst landed him a misconduct charge from World Rugby.

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The Springboks had been on the right side of the results since then, bouncing back to twice beat the Lions and win the series while also defeating Argentina twice in the Rugby Championship. That sequence meant that the standard of refereeing in those games wasn’t the hot topic it was when Erasmus filmed his extraordinary 62-minute tirade. 

It was always going to take another Springboks loss to see if anything had changed in the wake of the Erasmus bust-up and it seemingly has. Erasmus isn’t with the Springboks in Australia and it was left to head coach Jacques Nienaber to attend to the post-mortem and any issues the South Africans had coming out of last Sunday’s last-gasp loss to the Wallabies.  

Video Spacer

How Wallabies coach Dave Rennie views this Saturday’s rematch with the Springboks

Video Spacer

How Wallabies coach Dave Rennie views this Saturday’s rematch with the Springboks

That was a contest where the coach admitted that the discipline of his Springboks was poor in that they allowed Quade Cooper to hurt them off the kicking tee. But more importantly, given the unprecedented rumpus caused by Erasmus, it appears that the Springboks have established a more fruitful communication with World Rugby and the match referees regarding how they go about getting post-match feedback on decisions they want to be reviewed.  

That sounds like a very different situation to what unfolded in the aftermath of the first Test loss to the Lions. “We have got a framework that we work with now that we probably didn’t know,” explained Nienaber at a media briefing ahead of this Saturday’s rematch with the Wallabies in Brisbane.  

“It’s the same framework they used in the Six Nations and us not playing any rugby (in 20 months) before the Georgia Test match, we didn’t 100 per cent know what the process was. We made our clips (after Sunday’s game) and they went out on Monday after our review. It went through to Joel (Jutge, the referees boss) for World Rugby. They reviewed it and came back to us. The purpose of that is to get alignment from our side. 

“Everybody makes mistakes. We make mistakes, referees sometimes get things wrong, you can’t get everything right. But let’s say a player conceded three penalties and the referee will come back and say it was maybe a 50/50 call that maybe could have gone the other way or maybe he wasn’t offside, he didn’t transgress… then that will influence selection. 

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“You will look at the player and say, ‘Listen, you conceded three but they came back and said two of those weren’t (penalties) when they had all the angles and looked at it and play on would have been a better call’. That will influence the selection and that is all we want, to have clarity on the Test match so that when we select the team or we start talking about team selection that we don’t nail a player because his discipline was poor if it comes back from a referee that a better option there might have been play on. 

“I must say the feedback and the work from them has been good, from Joel’s side and from the referee’s side. There is good alignment and we will have another opportunity during the week to talk with them, a meeting on Thursday or Friday with the referees just to get clarity with our captain and vice-captains, get them talking and get a relationship going so when they meet each other on the pitch it is not the first time they will have a chat about certain things.

“I thought our discipline was poor,” he continued, reflecting on last weekend’s defeat on the Gold Coast. “Not poor in the sense that we conceded more penalties than Australia. We didn’t concede more penalties than them but for our standard and the fact we only conceded one try and scored three, they had kicks at goals and four of them were offside penalties. It is the most offside penalties we conceded in the Test matches that I have been involved in. That is what I mean by indiscipline.”

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Flankly 47 minutes ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 56 minutes ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
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Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

I thought we made a lot of progress against that type of defence by the WC last year. Lots of direct running and punching holes rather than using width. Against that type of defence I think you have to be looking to kick on first phase when you have front foot ball which we did relatively successfully. We are playing a lot of rugby behind the gain line at the moment. They are looking for those little interchanges for soft shoulders and fast ball or off loads but it regularly turns into them battering away with slow ball and going backwards, then putting in a very rushed kick under huge pressure.


JB brought that dimension when he first moved into 12 a couple of years ago but he's definitely not been at his best this year. I don't know if it is because he is being asked to play a narrow role, or carrying a niggle or two, but he does not look confident to me. He had that clean break on the weekend and stood there like he was a prop who found himself in open space and didn't know what to do with the ball. He is still a good first phase ball carrier though, they use him a lot off the line out to set up fast clean ball, but I don't think anyone is particularly clear on what they are supposed to do at that point. He was used really successfully as a second playmaker last year but I don't think he's been at that role once this year. He is a triple threat player but playing a very 1 dimensional role at the moment. He and Reiko have been absolutely rock solid on defence which is why I don't think there will be too much experimentation or changes there.

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