False positional security damages players’ potential

When Cobus Reinach finally got what many thought was a deserved Springbok call-up, a coach who should know what he is talking about said he wasn’t a Test player.

This was said with the kind of certainty that made one rethink the idea that the selection had been a long time coming, but by the looks of it somebody forgot to tell Reinach.

Playing in his first start for the Boks, Reinach did a heck of a job pretending to be a Test level scrumhalf against England last weekend – kicking judiciously, tackling with intent, running with intensity, and even grabbing a try in the process.

That denialist approach is the kind of healthy attitude needed against the Boks’ closed shop attitude to the scrumhalf position.

The rigidly entrenched hierarchy appears to be simple: it’s Fourie du Preez and Ruan Pienaar first, and the rest have to battle for minor placings.

Reinach’s performance against England showed up how presumptuous that approach is and the fact that the pecking order needs to be revisited.

As things stand, the scrumhalves not named, Du Preez and Pienaar, are given the impression they’re keeping the number nine jersey warm instead of staking a proper claim on it.

Sure if you have a fit and healthy Fourie du Preez you’d be daft not to play him. But as things stand he is injured, so the best scrumhalves the Boks have are the ones they are reluctant to back.

Many South African rugby fans are baffled by the variance in Pienaar’s performances for the Boks and his Irish club Leinster, but the answer could be that he has always felt he is a stop-gap measure for Du Preez.

Players are very intuitive when it comes to whether they have the coaching staff’s backing, and most of them react by doing the bare minimum until the favourite returns.

A great example of that can be found in Pat Lambie’s recent dip in form and confidence.

Over the last two years, Lambie was in Morne Steyn’s shadow and the frustrating thing for him was that most felt he was playing better than the former Bulls flyhalf but was being picked behind him.

The arrival of Handre Pollard meant not only were the selectors looking elsewhere for answers, they also appeared to think Lambie wasn’t part of the answer.

But the 24-year-old, no doubt miffed, was intelligent enough to recognise that flyhalf was no longer a closed shop and for once he was in a fair fight.

The same thing needs to happen with the halfback situation, where Pienaar, who is still one of the most gifted players produced by this country, is encouraged to forget about Du Preez, and Reinach and Francois Hougaard are told the same about him.

A player like Hougaard, a sensational athlete, also needs to have his strengths backed instead of constantly being nagged about his shortcomings.

The insistent highlighting of his weaknesses is giving the poor blighter an inferiority complex, which doesn’t go well with instinctive players.

And instead of constantly carping about how crap he is in the wet, why is he not given more opportunities to fix it in those conditions?

It’s all well and good to believe that Du Preez will make it all alright when he gets back, or that Pienaar has to play because he has played in the northern hemisphere conditions in the last few years.

But it is holding the Boks back from developing someone who may well be pressed into being the number one when they’ve been led to believe they are actually third choice.