“One Strauss for three du Preez? Seems like a fair trade.” – the editor of this publication

Volume 19, Number 27 25 July 2019 Register to receive your own free weekly newsletter at www.rugbyrsa.co.za

Wallaby Misery Continues at Ellis Park

Going into Saturday's opening Rugby Championship match, the Springboks had faced Australia at Ellis Park ten times in history, losing just once, by two points way back in 1963 – 56 years ago. And this Wallaby team was not good enough to prevent that record being extended for at least another year.

But this is not a blow-by-blow match report. We use this space to link you to that sort of thing and to try to provide some context to the stories we choose to link. Speaking of which, the match on Saturday was a dream Springbok début for flyhalf ’ younger brother, Herschel. Another fascinating – and, indeed, wonderful part of Saturday’s test match at fortress Ellis Park was the Jantjies the Younger scored the first try after running Gwijo Squad. a brilliant supporting line for and got a second with a sniping run of his own down the blind You can find this vibrant, thoroughly enjoyable part side before being substituted in the 66th minute. of test-match rugby in at the matches, on Twitter and on Facebook. In our view, it’s a There’s a lovely video tribute to Herschel on Twitter, wonderful and stunningly unique addition to our rich put there by SARugbymag.com. He was most Springbok tradition and heritage. deservedly selected Man of the Match for his efforts. But we digress. Getting back to actual rugby, one of our favourite commentators on the game is the one and only Oom Rugby. On Tuesday, he shared a link to a fascinating analysis by Murray Kinsella on what Oom called “Springbok bounce back plays”.

He opined that Kinsella’s analysis illustrates perfectly the high value of crossing the gainline as well as why a big carry through the flyhalf channel can be so devastating in modern rugby.

KEY TOPICS IN THIS NEWSLETTER

Currie Cup Results Give Log Interesting Look Josh Strauss to Return to South Africa Jaguares in Pole Position to Step Up Next Year Provincialism in SA Rugby is Far From Dead Age-Group Rugby Champs a Work in Progress Hansen Brings Out the All Blacks A Team

Page 1 Results Give Log Interesting Look Jaguares in Pole Position to Step Up Next Year

The Currie Cup Premier Division fixtures this At the halfway mark in the Currie Cup First Division, weekend began on Friday afternoon when the its looking more and more likely that the Jaguares are visited Kimberley to take on the home town . going to reign supreme. So far this season they have It was always going to be a tough fixture for the two beaten (43-50) at home, welcomed Boland teams that disputed the SuperSport Rugby Challenge Cavaliers to their tournament base in Potchefstroom final. and thrashed them (54-17) and, last week, travelled to East London to absolutely hammer And so it turned out. Although the home team took (12-78). the lead relatively early and never fell behind, every time they scored, the visitors came back at them – to the extent that the Pumas levelled the match at 29-all with less than ten minutes to go. In the end, the final score of 37-29 will be a warning to all other teams in the competition.

The Friday night encounter at Lotus was a different story. The visiting Free State scored first and never looked back. They led by ten points at half-time (12-22) and just kept stretching They play EP Elephants this week, SWD Eagles next out the lead in the second half. weekend, Valke on the following weekend Indeed, if it wasn’t for two unconverted tries in the in week seven. On current form, we seriously cannot last few minutes, the scoreline would have been see them losing any of those matches. Nor do we decidedly unflattering for the home side. They also expect any team to challenge them in the semifinals conceded a bonus point to the visitors. The final or final, but stranger things have happened. score was 27-43. The interesting bit will be to see who they play in the As an aside, the Currie Cup may turn out to be a promotion/relegation match at the end of the season. useful warm-up exercise for the PRO14. The At the moment Blue Bulls lie at the bottom of the will no doubt be doing the same in Premier Division log with Pumas marginally above the First Division but, probably, with less intensity. them. But with four rounds to go, there’s still a lot of rugby to be played. The final match of the weekend was on Saturday in where our editor’s least favoured team hosted Getting back to this weekend’s action, we once again Western Province. Unfortunately him and for fans in couldn’t find any First Division match reports. But the Western Cape, the home side burgled a first win the results are on the SARugby website and show (32-27). that Boland was pipped by EP Elephants (38-39) at home, Valke bagged an away win in a low-scoring match against Leopards (7-12) and Griffons had to settle for a draw against SWD Eagles (36-all).

This weekend’s fixtures – apart from the EP Elephants vs Jaguares (Saturday) encounter already mentioned – will see SWD Eagles entertain (Friday, 19:00), Valke host Griffons (Saturday) and Leopards welcome Border Bulldogs (Saturday). All the Saturday games appear to kick off at 15:00 but, again, none seem scheduled for television broadcast.

Page 2 Page 3 Age-Group Rugby Champs a Work in Progress Josh Strauss to Return to South Africa

SA Rugby’s U20 Championships continued this past We first became aware of the news when Jamie Lyall weekend with Griquas going down narrowly to reported it on Twitter: “Josh Strauss is set to return to Griffons (36-38) in Kimberley, Limpopo Blue Bulls South Africa, agreeing a deal to join the Bulls. Sale thrashed Valke (61-29) and Boland Cavaliers did a are allowing him to move on despite having a similar demolition job on SWD Eagles (71-11). year left on his contract. Had drawn interest from France, and I believe Glasgow too made some Looking at the log, and while it’s too early to identify enquiries about bringing him back to Scotstoun.” any clear trends, EP Elephants, Griffons, Leopards and Pumas have all played one, won one. This weekend should help sort the wheat from the chaff when Griffons host Leopards and both EP Elephants and Pumas play away against SWD Eagles and Valke respectively.

Meanwhile, the U21 Championships is at the halfway stage with Blue Bulls seven points clear on top of the log. Below that is a tussle for the other semifinal spots. Last weekend lost at home to Western Province (10-20) while triumphed away from home in Durban (40-44) and Blue Bulls travelled to Potchefstroom to put the Leopards to the sword (6-38). We subsequently looked into it and found several news stories with a little more detail but, to be frank, The fixtures this week are all return matches: not as much as we had hoped. All appear to have Leopards will be in Durban, Golden Lions travel to been instigated by an announcement by his club. Bloemfontein and Blue Bulls make the arduous trip to Cape Town. All three of the away teams won the And the news is pretty much contained in Lyall’s fist match between the sides when playing at home so Tweet above. But Strauss’ comment in the it could be interesting. announcement may hint at what might be behind it: “For family reasons a move back to South Africa Unfortunately, none of the above is being televised as makes sense and I was delighted to get an offer from far as we can see so you will have to go down to a the Bulls ahead of the 2020 Season. I rugby field near you if you want to catch any of the wish Dimes and the club all the best for the future.” action. Full details of the U20 Championships and the U21 Championships can be found on the web. Another factor that may have come into play is a move to Manchester by the du Preez twins, Jean-Luc and Daniel, along with elder brother Rob. That was initially to be on a temporary loan basis but then daddy dearest was fired from his coaching job in Durban. Ok. Fired is our word. The official announcement went something along the lines of: the franchise “...had amicably parted ways with [its] head coach.”

But getting back to the man of the moment, Josh Strauss, the news of his imminent arrival prompted our utterly unopionionated editor to quip: “One Strauss for three du Preez? Seems like a fair trade.”

Page 4 Page 5 Provincialism in SA Rugby is Far From Dead Hansen Brings Out the All Blacks A Team

It is probably to be expected that South African There’s an interesting piece on Rugby365 this week rugby fans – particularly those of a certain age – are asserting that All Blacks coach, Steve Hansen, has still steeped in the almost rabid provincialism with selected his best possible team for the fixture against which they grew up. This was highlighted on Sunday the Springboks in Wellington on Saturday. Why this morning when a friend of our editor called to chat would be surprising is a mystery to us but about the Springbok match last weekend. nevertheless.

One of the first remarks he made was that he thought Elton Jantjies had kicked too much early on and that he had been reigned by other senior players. This didn’t square with our editor’s memory so we watched the replay at 11am on Sunday, which proved the perception entirely wrong.

We counted 35 kicks by the Springboks in the match on Saturday, of which 23 were by the flyhalf (four kick-offs, five conversions and eight penalties). In the entire match he kicked out of hand only six times but the team as a whole did so 22 times. Obviously, The article opines that selection of both Richie 16 of those kicks were by other players but it is an Mo’unga (flyhalf) and Beauden Barrett (fullback) interesting lesson in how difficult a perception is to suggests this is the best possible New Zealand line- shake. up. And while a glance at the rest of the team sheet would tend to confirm that, we have to ask again, For context, the friend is a Western Province and why should this be a surprise? supporter and his negative attitude probably goes back to the year that Jantjies played in Cape Think about the context: Town. Back then he was instructed by a certain idiot It is All Blacks versus Springboks, one of the coach, to kick for territory as often as possible. It fiercest rivalries in world rugby. wasn’t a good game plan then and it isn’t now. The two teams are the top two in historical win To verify our findings we consulted our Rugby Stats percentage in test matches (both over 65%). app (available on Android and Apple). It reported 22 Springboks won the previous encounter kicks in total but put nine at the door of Jantjies the between the teams at this venue (last year). Elder so we have to wonder if the statistician who It is a dress rehearsal for both team’s opening made the count isn’t also a Western Province game of the Rugby World Cup in Japan. supporter. Either that or we counted wrong. Why would either team go into Wellington undercooked? For the record, the All Black match fifteen are: 15. Beauden Barrett; 14. Ben Smith; 13. Jack Goodhue; 12. Sonny Bill Williams; 11. Rieko Ioane; 10. Richie Mo’unga; 9. Thomas Perenara; 8. Kieran Read (captain); 7. Matt Todd; 6. Shannon Frizell; 5. Sam Whitelock; 4. Brodie Retallick; 3. Owen Franks; 2. Codie Taylor; 1. Joe Moody.

Replacements: 16. Dane Coles; 17. Ofa Tu’ungafasi; 18. Angus Ta’avao; 19. Vaea Fifita; 20. Dalton Papalii; 21. Aaron Smith; 22. Anton Lienert-Brown; 23. George Bridge.

Page 6 Anticipating Battle of the Caketin on Saturday

The last time the Springboks played the All Blacks But the coaching staff opted to rather give the honour at the stadium known locally as the caketin in to . The full squad for the match is: Wellington, the visitors surprised New Zealand (34- 36). If our memory serves us correctly, that was the 15. ; 14. ; 13. Lukhanyo very first time South Africa beat New Zealand at Am; 12. ; 11. ; that venue. 10. Handré Pollard; 9. ; 8. Duane Vermeulen (captain); 7. Pieter-Steph du Toit; 6. As we suggested last week, coach ; 5. ; 4. ; 3. has rung the changes for the New Zealand match. ; 2. ; 1. . Only three of the starting players last week made the team for the All Black test: Eben Etzebeth, The replacements for Saturday are: Pieter-Steph du Toit and Makazole Mapimpi. 16. ; 17. ; 18. The latter two would probably have been on the ; 19. RG Snyman; 20. ; bench had and Aphiwe Dyantyi not 21. ; 22. Frans Steyn; 23. . been injured. Although regular Bok captain Kolisis has recovered from his injury, Erasmus opted not to If it weren’t for the presence of Malherbe and de risk him getting injured again so close to the World Allende, one might be tempted to call it a pretty strong Cup. team. However, the former will struggle in the scrums against Joe Moody and the latter will, as usual, be far All of this meant that the Springboks were in need too predictable. of a captain. One option would have been last week’s captain, Etzebeth; du Toit was another On the plus side, their replacements on the bench are option. more than capable of doing the job properly once they come on. One hopes the hole isn't too deep at that point.

But on a more intriguing note, perhaps the most surprising selection was that of Kwagga Smith at flank. It’s not that we doubt his quality; Not at all. No, we just wonder what happened to swing things in his favour. There’s a piece running on SARugbymag.com this week that may provide some of those answers.

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For your weekend viewing pleasure

Without a doubt, the big one this weekend is between the number one and number two (in historic win percentages) of world rugby: All Blacks vs Springboks. That kicks off at 09:35 Saturday morning and will be followed a couple of hours later by the other Rugby Championships match- up: Australia versus Argentina.

For the early risers, our Ultimate Rugby app also tells us that there are three encounters in the Pacific Nations Cup taking place in the wee hours of Saturday and Sunday. And the Currie Cup Premier Division (alongside) also continues (ramifications on page two), but that’s it for the televised rugby this weekend.

As far as the non-televised rugby is concerned, on page two you’ll find details and analysis of the Currie Cup First Division fixtures on Friday and Saturday. And then one half of page four touches on the results and fixtures in the local U20 and U21 championships. Finally, there is also the Women’s IPL this weekend.

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