Get our rugby players' axes sharp, before they tackle the trees

There’s been a bit of lively debate from the keyboard crusaders following my endorsement of Dan Retief’s views in his excellent piece entitled SA’s junior talent drying up?

https://www.alloutrugby.com/sas-junior-talent-drying/

Retief bemoans the poor performance, again, of the under-20s at the recent world champs, and concludes that, in the handful of schools that those players come from, they are not learning the things that will make them “perfectly rounded players possessing the mental and physical abilities to be the best over a sustained period of time.”

We South African’s tend to believe that our rugby players are bigger, stronger, more physical and more aggressive than anyone else’s. Retief points out that that isn’t actually the case anymore, but our top schools strive to make their players fit that mould anyway. And if they don’t have the material to do that, they scour the land and buy it from other schools somewhere else.

Hardly, I and others have been on and on about, the formula for sustained rugby success.

Those who have been commenting on this have pointed to the success of our top schools against international opposition, and have explained what it is that the New Zealand schools do. Rugby at a top five school is a serious business and it should be treated that way, one of them wrote.

Of course it is, and of course it should be. But if winning games and rising to the top of the rankings is the dominant value that underpins their operation then, I believe, they are doing us a disservice.

It was Abraham Lincoln, apparently, who said “give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." It’s led to an oft-quoted business principle referring to the need to get what you need to get the job done in order, before you rush in and try to do the work.

Here’s a sports coaching analogy. Swimming coaches spend hours on drills to get their swimmers' technique right. They make them wear flippers – not to make the go faster, but to allow them to keep going forward while they work, in fine detail, on their stroke – they don’t, these days, concentrate on strength, stamina and mental attitude alone.

Sure, at junior level the strongest, fittest and most bloody-minded swimmers will win races, but you need to learn the basics if you want to be good in the long run.

The South African rugby game plan is based on physical domination, on effective kick-chasing and brutal defence. It’s what won us two World Cups and I agree with those who say we will never beat the All Blacks by playing an expansive, open game.

The problem is that the All Black are better than us at the physical game too, and they have the skills to use the opportunities that come their way to score tries out wide.

The answer to Retief’s question is no – there is still plenty of talent. We are just expecting them to play South African rugby at school level without teaching them the skills that a good rugby player needs to have before he is taught to play any style at all.

We are expecting them to chop down the trees without taking the time to ensure that their axes are sharp enough to do so.