Springboks will try new lineout calls
The presence of two former SA players in Scotland’s team forced the Springboks to change some tactics.
|||Newcastle - The presence of South African-born WP Nel and Josh Strauss in the Scotland pack forced the Springboks into making some minor alterations and speaking a different language with their lineout calls.
Nel and Strauss have been influential in the resurgence of Scottish rugby of late, especially after their two convincing wins in Pool B at the Rugby World Cup and there is a fear amongst the Springboks that the duo could have a say in the outcome of the clash between Scotland and South Africa at St James Park on Saturday.
Prior to seeking greener pastures up north, both Nel and Strauss had made it into Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer’s first Springbok squad training camp and, in the process, picked up enough intelligence to know how the Springboks will play.
While three years have elapsed since Strauss and Nel boarded a plane to the highlands of Scotland, not much has changed with the Springboks’ blueprint for gaining world dominance.
It is this inside knowledge that left the Springboks scrambling to make minor adjustments to their lineout calls this week and without lineout maestro Victor Matfield, the Springboks are feeling vulnerable and jittery ahead of their must-win clash in Newcastle.
“We had Josh and WP in our training camp three and a half years back... They were part of our team and they did lineouts with the team and have our manuals. A lot of the time we give calls in Afrikaans which a lot of the world don’t understand, now it has changed. We’ve had to change our calling system just to make sure that they don’t remember something. They are clever guys so they probably will remember,” Meyer said.
With Matfield taking a week’s rest because of a hamstring injury sustained during the brutal affair against Samoa last week, the burden of marshalling the lineouts will rest on the broad shoulders of young lock Lood de Jager, and Meyer has admitted that it will add more pressure on the in-form Cheetahs lock who has grown in leaps and bounds this year.
“It’s going to be tough on Lood because now he has to speak English,” Meyer joked.
“He has to have a different calling system which he hasn’t done that much and that will be more pressure on them (De Jager and Eben Etzebeth) because people know that we are good at lineouts and score off them. It will be tough on those two youngsters but they are brilliant at the moment and we’ve made plans there so we’ve had to adapt a lot of things. It is a totally new calling system and we will do new lineouts which we’ve never done before. Sometimes it doesn’t work because we haven’t trained that as well, but we didn’t have a choice in this case,” Meyer said.
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