SPRINGBOK TACTICS

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1928, Page 5

SPRINGBOK TACTICS

SUPERIORITY IN SCRUMS LESSONS OF FIRST TEST. VIEWS OF NEW ZEALANDER. Johannesburg, July 23. Mr. 8. G. Nicholls, brother of Mark Nicholls, vice-captain of the New Zealand Rugby team, and a well-known Wellington Rugby enthusiast, who is travelling with the touring party in South Africa, in the course of a special interview expressed the view that the All Blacks’ victory in the second test was due to superlative play of the New Zealand forwards who, he said, played the finest game he had ever seen them play. “Our forwards,” he said, “showed themselves as solid scrummagers, not the half-hearted pushers we saw at Durban, and, now they have found themselves, we should see the next two tests at Port Elizabeth and Capetown as closely contested as the Johannesbury game. They got to work from the onset and never minced matters.

“I have heard the South African pack severely criticised for its work in the second test, but were not the Springboks surprised at the showing of their opponents, and was not their lower standard of play as compared with the Durban game due in some measure to the surprisingly hard fight put up by the New Zealanders ? FINE TEAM WORK. ‘"The New Zealanders have now started to play as a team. It was just fine team work which pulled off the game for them at Johannesburg. Admittedly, the winning points were put up by a dropped goal, but then this was opportunism made possible because of team work, and not success by an individual after several abortive attempts. I should like to say Dailey played a really great game for New Zealand, and so somewhat discounted the efforts of Devine, his opponent at scrum-half. Bennie Osler, too, was not tho matchwinning factor he proved to be in the first test game. The man on the South African side who struck me as being very fine indeed was Brand, a player who could not get into his provincial side, but yet should prove very useful to South Africa in the remaining test matches.

“This second test match was the point in the tour which was to tho New Zealanders the all important crisis. Like a man who has been seriously ill, ;.nd who has passed the point which leads to recovery, so I think has the strange sickness which has hitherto beset the tourists passed from them. “Our forwards made a remarkable showing compared with their play in the first test, and they proved, too, they could hold the South African pack with seven men. BETTER SCRUM FORMATION,

“I contend, however, that the South African scrum formation is infinitely better than ours, and that when we return to New Zealand we shall have to make changes in our forward tactics. But the second test showed full well what seven men inspired could do again a great South African pack. Of course, we only got the ball from the scrums once to the South Africans’ twice on an average, but, all told, we were six better in the final count than at Durban, and in the line-outs we secured the ball just as frequently, and held the advantage just as the South African attack did in'the scrums.

“The first test match,” remarked Mr. Nicholls, “taught us full well where our weaknesses lay, but, after all consideration, I believe the New Zealand system of play, the open style, is the better, apart from it being more spectacular. What brought the fact home very vividly to me was that, when in the last ’ ten minutes of the second test the Springboks were down one point, and were doing their utmost to regain the lead, they did not play their customary close game, but at once resorted to New Zealand tactics and opened up the game in a wonderfully fine manner. Probably only the fact that the New Zealanders had their tails up and were playing a dour defensive game stopped them from scor-

ing, for the South Africans played really spectacular football at the time. FOUND THEIR FEET. “The team work which the All Blacks have now developed,” continued Mr. Nicholls, “will surely bear them in good stead when the other two tests are played. It may well be that New Zealand may not win another test match in South Africa, but I am sure tho South Africans I have met and chatted with since the second test are the las’ people to think that this will probably be so. Personally I am inclined to think that, unless the Springbok team comes out with some truly great football at Port Elizabeth and Capetown, the All Blacks wi'l win the tests. “It has taken the New Zealanders a good time to find their feet, but the members of the team now feel they have found themselves on South African turf, and it will be amazing if they give anything like a repetition of the poor form they displayed in the first test match. The players now have the confidence they lacked a few weeks back, and '-urely this confidence will have its effect on their play in future. But they are not likely to be over-confident. They know they have two hard tests in front of them, ai.d I do not think they will make tho mistake I am inclined to think the South Africans made at Johannesburg in underestimating their opponents.—Auckland Herald special correspondent.