From: deacon@apelc5.inf.ethz.ch (Andrew Deacon)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.rugby
Subject: Re: Springboks in France - news please.
Date: 5 Oct 92 22:10:17 GMT
Organization: Dept. Informatik, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, CH

"Botha's men shake off cultural shock to face reality amid 
the hysteria of their first European tour in 18 years."

- The London Sunday Times

Refered to as their lack of sophisticated:

 "The almost wide-eyed thrill they obviously derived from
  their first trip was plain for all to see in the evening  
  at Vincent's Bar in Bordeaux. Theo van Rensburg ... flatly 
  refused to join a golf match on Thursday saying `I can play
  golf is SA, but I may never come to Bordeaux again.'
  Unfortunately theu may well come over fresh-faced on the 
  field as well."

They continuted on a similar arguments and concluded that only
Naas was on top of things (they seemed to like what he said and
did - but not what any other South African said or did!). 

When SA lost to Oz they had a similar story (critical 
of how the administrators had handled things - especially the 
press - again feeling that the rubgy administraters and players 
where not doing the PR right - i.e. 1990s style). The newspaper
has had a few very positive things to say about SA sport,
e.g. Mike Proctor got big headlines a month or so ago for
turning around a county cricket side and brining them into a final.
Just looking at how sport (especially American) is sold here,
one can see how much work SA rugby must do in order to improve
their image and get a faithful folowing again. 

Step one is for all players to look as if they are enjoying
playing (and living!) - what ever happens. 

Next stop lifting in the lineouts, kicking people on the
ground, falling on the ground. This all gives away 3 points
or 50 m and is replayed in slow motion on TV so many times 
(each with the comment that this is typical sophisticated 
SA play) that it cannot be doing any good. Most of this is not
interprested as good hard play. This may be a complete change
in how people feel about the game - but SA seems to be
shown as an example of outdated style and how SA is
unable to adapt (this should not be true - but probably fits 
quite closely with the European view of White South Africans).

 "Indeed, almost all the glaring faults evident in their
  game in August were still present. They still cannot resit
  the temptation to lift their lineout jumpers, and they
  certainly need to. Geldenhuys and Hattingh were two of
  the shortest lineout men you could imagine ... [Geldenhuys] 
  was far too willowly and was knocket all over the place
  whenever he got the ball."
 
I am not sure he looked "willowly" but he did not look happy
(and he tended to try and take out other people in frustration).
The French tallmen were tall but not heavily build (the one
from West Africa was very good and made the first try and played
important roles in other scoring moves). They were very fast
and made McDonald "completely anonymous as a flanker" [what
a way to say it - I must say I only saw him for the first time 
very later in the game - so its an accurate discription].

Well I am sure the SA side will come back and show how they
can play. They have good players and just need to get things
together better.

- Andrew