Departing Springboks assistant coach Felix Jones alongside players Kwagga Smith and Willie Le Roux detail how the side plans to take down the All Blacks in a Rugby World Cup final ‘spectacle’. Video / NZ Herald
Quite when rugby referees became devotees of iconography is hard to know, but some time around the middle of this year perhaps.
Certainly, there was strong evidence that English referee Mathew Carley officiated the All Blacks match against the Springboks in mid-August byinterpreting the events of the earliest set-piece exchanges to mean that South Africa were physically dominant in every aspect of the game.
He decided, from what he saw in that first scrum, that Ethan de Groot was struggling to legally contain the power of Frans Malhebre and after he saw those pictures, he formed a cast-iron view on what he was witnessing, and the detail of the next 75 minutes largely became irrelevant.
Just as art historians have tried to interpret 2000 years of Christianity based on Leonardo De Vinci’s Last Supper, so it has been at this World Cup, that the referees have wanted, or have perhaps been instructed, to interpret a test match based on the first scrum they see.
None of them, it seems, have any appetite to revisit or reconsider the possibility that the first thing they saw was perhaps not the full story, and it is for this highly specific reason that the All Blacks have returned their strongest scrummager, Nepo Laulala, to the bench for Saturday’s World Cup final.
South Africa made it to the final on the strength of the pictures reserve prop Ox Nche was able to create when he came off the bench 50 minutes into the semifinal.
It became an entirely different game because Nche waddled into action against England, crushed the first scrum he put down and referee Ben O’Keeffe was suddenly seeing South African penalties every time there was a set-piece.
A scrum battle that had been too hard to interpret up until then, suddenly produced the image the referee needed to make a definitive judgment about who was dominating and if England have one legitimate complaint relating to the officiating, it is that they produced a dominant scrum inside South Africa’s 22 with 12 minutes to go, but O’Keefe was perhaps reluctant to believe it and give the penalty and instead gave the Boks a second or two longer to clear the ball.
But that’s the value of producing a strong picture in that all-critical first scrum – it gives the referee their definitive moment on which to judge everything, and so Laulala will have one highly specific job to do when he enters the fray most likely around the 60-minute mark.
He’ll need to use his colossal brute strength and scrummaging wiles to lay down a rock-solid platform when he’s asked to lock horns with Nche for the first time.
He needs to neutralise the Ox, dispel the myth of the bomb squad and not give Barnes one hint of weakness from which he can then merrily whistle the All Blacks out of the final.
Returning Laulala to the bench for what will be his last test is a triumph for pragmatic and needs-must selecting.
He takes the place of the younger, more dynamic and mobile Fletcher Newell who produced 17 high-quality minutes against Ireland in the quarter-final, delivering precisely what he was asked – which was ball-carrying, scrambling defence and effective cleanout work.
But what the All Blacks needed against Ireland in the last 20 minutes is not what they will need against South Africa.
The All Blacks perform the haka in front of the South Africa team prior to the Summer International at Twickenham this year. Photo / Getty Images.
Laulala has been picked because he’s the best scrummaging tight-head in the squad and is the best equipped to nullify the technically awkward Nche.
Laulala doesn’t need to touch the ball when he comes on. He doesn’t even need to make a tackle or clean out a ruck.
His mission is to deliver the best scrummaging of his career and prevent the legend of the Springboks loosehead growing yet more.
When Nche started winning scrum penalties against England, it was the catalyst for not only O’Keefe to view the world differently, it also galvanised the Springboks pack and they became tighter, lower, harder and more dynamic in those last 20 minutes.
Don’t give Nche his moment and perhaps it will instil within the Boks a sense of panic that their bold move of loading their bench with seven forwards may not have any impact.
But of course, for Laulala to play the role he has been assigned, the All Blacks need to ensure that Barnes has not already had reason to assign the Boks dominant status.
There can’t be a repeat of what happened in London before the tournament, but the All Blacks coaching staff, by picking de Groot to start, have shown they have unshakeable confidence that he has learned the art of getting the first scrum right.
De Groot has a depth of resilience that has been formed on his capacity to absorb and adapt without losing the essence of himself.
He’s a scrapper, a fixer and a dogged-type who will only be done over by the same prop once and hence the selectors were eager to bring him straight back into the team to face Ireland after he served a two-week suspension picked up against Namibia, and hence they have no concerns about his ability to confront Malherbe in the World Cup final and get that first scrum right.
All Blacks
1. Ethan de Groot, 2. Codie Taylor 3. Tyrel Lomax, 4. Brodie Retallick, 5. Scott Barrett, 6. Shannon Frizell, 7. Sam Cane (c), 8. Ardie Savea, 9. Aaron Smith, 10. Richie Mo’unga, 11. Mark Tele’a, 12. Jordie Barrett, 13. Rieko Ioane, 14. Will Jordan, 15. Beauden Barrett.
