LONG READ Can the Wallabies win the battle of the back-five against the Boks?

“Saturday comes again – welcome or not, it comes again like it always does; welcome or not, wanted or not, another judgment day. The chance to be saved, the chance to be damned.” Those were the poetic, prophetic words of that erstwhile managerial legend of Derby County and Nottingham Forest, Brian Clough.

After three humdrum, work-a-day weekdays – two against Wales and one versus Georgia – that Saturday will come suddenly indeed for Joe Schmidt’s Wallabies on 10^th August at the Suncorp stadium in Brisbane. The arrival of the world champion Springboks on Australian shores for the first two rounds of the Rugby Championship 2024 is Judgment Day. A chance to be saved, a chance to be damned.

The odds look to have swayed in favour of the fiery pit, with the loss of luminaries like captain-elect Liam Wright and open-side tearaway Fraser McReight to injury, and Will Skelton due for some much-needed R & R after another monstrous, serpentine Top 14 season with La Rochelle.

All three might have been expected to start in the back-five forwards in a full-strength Australian side, not least because they are all leaders: McReight was skipper of the Junior Wallabies back in 2019 and has been mentioned in dispatches as a potential captain of the senior team; Liam Wright led the Wallabies with notable gravitas for their first Test against Wales, while Skelton was appointed by Eddie Jones for the ill-fated World Cup venture in late 2023.

There is no sugar-coating the truth that the absence of Skelton and Wright hurts, right down to the bone. Both possessed the grit and sheer physicality to match the Springboks in the mano-a-mano contests South Africa loves so much. But if you are an Aussie average joe, do not despair. Before you begin the wailing and the tearing of hair, or any beatings of the chest at the loss of three key players, pause for long enough to consider South Africa’s own parlous situation in the same area.

Rassie Erasmus has lost three of his top five choices in the second row [Franco Mostert, Lood De Jager and Jean Kleyn] and both of his anointed number 8’s at the 2023 World Cup are missing. The ‘great Duane’ Vermeulen, one of the most formidable of eighth men in the professional era, has retired once and for all. The next man in the succession planning, Jasper Wiese, is still labouring under the yoke of a six-match suspension incurred right at the end of the English Premiership season, during a match between his club Leicester Tigers and the Exeter Chiefs.

Without Vermeulen and Wiese, South Africa lack genuine power on the carry ‘early doors’. They attempted to use Siya Kolisi in the same role against Ireland, and the World Cup-winning icon finished with only 15 metres gained over the two Tests.

Without Vermeulen and Wiese, South Africa lack genuine power on the carry ‘early doors’. They attempted to use Siya Kolisi in the same role against Ireland, and the World Cup-winning icon finished with only 15 metres gained over the two Tests. It is not a role for which a legend of the Rainbow Nation is ideally-suited.

The three missing second rows also happen to include South Africa’s two most experienced lineout callers by far, Mostert and De Jager. As Rassie Erasmus observed when the third member of that injured trio became eligible for the Springboks again, having first represented his adopted country Ireland:

“A guy like Jean [Kleyn is] a monster of a guy and he played with Rudolf [R.G. Snyman] for Munster. He has won the United Rugby Championship, he knows most of the players here.

“We’ve always got all these locks but every time we’ve gone to [World Cup] finals… we lost ‘Lood’ in the final of the previous [2019] World Cup in the 20^th minute and ‘Sous’ [Mostert] immediately went on.

“With R.G. getting the role at Munster, and also calling [from] five in the line-out, which he didn’t do before when he was with us, he got that experience of playing [at] four and five lock.”

The problem with the spin is the sheer lack of time R.G. Snyman has spent on the field with Munster. He only made three starts at the #5 spot in the 2023-24 season, playing 521 total minutes. The previous season, it was another three starts at #5 lock with even fewer total minutes in the saddle [176].

Those figures are not enough to qualify you as an international lineout caller, even if you do happen to stand six feet nine or six feet 10 inches tall. The doubts would only be reinforced by Munster’s overall performance at the lineout in URC 2023-24, where they finished a lowly 13^th out of 16. An 83% retention rate with the likes of Tadhg Beirne, Thomas Ahern, Peter O’Mahony and Snyman in your squad does not inspire confidence.

If the Wallabies accept that they probably need to defend against the Springbok super-strength at the scrum, they could do a lot worse than look to make inroads at the other major set-piece by way of compensation.

As ex-Leinster hooker turned prominent pundit Bernard Jackman explained after a galling New Year’s Day defeat to Connacht, in which the Munstermen lost six out of their 16 lineout throws:

“It’s just a serious lack of confidence in that Munster lineout, a serious lack of smarts in terms of option-taking, [at] seeing where the space is.

“Sometimes it seems as if because they’ve lost confidence in the hooker, they’re trying to give him easy throws, and that’s throwing it into contested areas, and that’s making them lose more ball.

“Everything is a little bit off.”

If the Wallabies accept that they probably need to defend against the Springbok super-strength at the scrum, they could do a lot worse than look to make inroads at the other major set-piece by way of compensation.

Without a proven international open-side flanker sitting behind McReight, Joe Schmidt may as well start with Nick Frost and Lukhan Salakaia-Loto in the second row, and Seru Uru, Bobby Valetini and Tom Hooper behind them. That would give him the potential to swamp Rudolph’s options at lineout time.

Is there a measure of risk associated in picking a back-five unit without a specialist open-side flanker to run on? For sure. Is the risk outweighed by the presence of four big men with the basic speed to cover either the middle or back rows of the scrum? Quite probably.

One of the lessons of Ireland series in July was the sharp downturn in South African lineout fortunes when Mostert was replaced by R.G. Snyman – after 49 minutes of the first Test at Loftus Versveld, and after only 16 minutes in the second game in Durban.

With Mostert running the lineout, the Springboks won 14 of their 15 throws cleanly, with an even spread of ball won at the front, middle and back. With Snyman replacing him, South Africa retained seven throws while losing three directly, with a further two ‘spoils’ – turnovers on the subsequent phase occurring from pressure applied at the lineout. Five of the successful lineouts were balls were won at the front by Eben Etzebeth, so the Mostert-generated confidence in an even spread was also lost in the process.

The last half-hour of the first game at Loftus hinted at some of the issues to come:

In the series against the Irish, South Africa tended to opt for 4 or 5-man lines when the lineout captaincy switched over to R.G. When the big man looks to extend the line in the first clip, the whole process is clunky. There is no finesse, and very little attempt to disguise the target-space, which means that James Ryan can to mirror Snyman’s movement closely enough to force an error. The second clip illustrates his automatic reaction, a ‘safe’ bail-out at the front. In the shorter lines it is almost impossible block all routes to the halfback if the ball is won off-the-top.

The problems at King’s Park began just after half-time:

The pattern is exactly the same as in the first turnover at Loftus – the same compression at the front, the same extension of the line to the back without any real attempt to decoy Ryan [in the black hat] away from Snyman.

Two minutes later, Ireland achieved the outcome from a five-man line:

On this occasion, there is a half-hearted effort to offer a fake before the jump, but it never looks like convincing Ryan and his two boosters to shift away from the intended target space. The only difference is that it is Pieter-Steph Du Toit, not Rudolph Snyman beaten to the punch this time around.

Those two turnovers provoked the same lineout captaincy response as in Pretoria, with Snyman calling four times in a row to Eben Etzebeth at the front:

The problem for South Africa is not so much that Etzebeth cannot win front ball, but the limitations in its use thereafter. In the first instance Ireland stuff the maul easily, in the second example one pass away from the line still leaves Marco Van Staden running at a pair of Irish forwards, rather than a midfield back. It is the kind of contest that neither Van Staden, nor Kwagga Smith, or Siya Kolisi are ever likely to win consistently.

Welcome or not, wanted or not, another Saturday lies just around the corner for Joe Schmidt’s Wallabies, and it will present a far sterner challenge than either Wales or Georgia were able to mount in July. The Springboks still represent the ultimate test of sustained quality at the set-piece, and that is where they will look to land a knockout blow on Schmidt’s new charges first.

If Australia’s scrum can hold its own, the absence of Will Skelton and the injury to Fraser McReight may just force Schmidt’s hand, to make the bold play in selection. Without a proven international number seven in the frame, he can opt for four genuine aerial athletes in the back five forwards and look to pressure R.G. Snyman and Co. at lineout time. On Judgment Day, a touch of audacity is required. With both salvation or damnation in the air, only the bold prevail.