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During the 73rd minute of the Lions’ come-from-behind win against the Melbourne Rebels at Ellis Park last weekend, the hosts were given a penalty with the scores on 33-all, and Malcolm Marx was confronted with what has become the captain’s dilemma over the best part of the past decade.
Marx delayed the game by about two minutes as he looked towards the touchline for guidance on whether to take the kick at poles or to pop the ball into touch for a line-out drive.
The latter hypothesis won, but yielded nothing, with another of the penalties referee Egon Seconds was dishing out like confetti, giving young replacement fly half Gianni Lombard the opportunity to be a hero after the final hooter.
Despite the all’s well that ends well conclusion to the match, Marx’s reluctance to take sole responsibility for the call exposed the overreliance of our teams’ designated leaders on the man wielding a walkie-talkie in a coaching box somewhere in the stadium to do their thinking for them.
The basic deliberations in the equation were whether the Lions felt they could defend a three-point lead for the five minutes that would be left after kicking for goal, or get a bigger lead by hopefully scoring from a rolling maul.
The calculations – based on how the game had gone – were simple enough, yet the verdict was made by someone who hadn’t even been on the field.
It’s not the first time a South African captain has outsourced decision making.
Springbok captain Siya Kolisi is known for canvassing the opinion of his leadership group on the field, with some of them calling out the decision to the referee before he’s had the opportunity to even discuss it.
While it seems a humble enough approach, captains should understand that being entrusted with making the big calls is how they earn their keep as team leaders.
To be fair, when you think back to the Dewald Potgieter debacle in 2013, one can see why coaches are so beholden to having the option of barking instructions via walkie-talkies.
Potgieter is infamous for having turned down three kickable penalties in favour of trying to score tries in the Bulls’ semifinal against the Brumbies, a gamble that backfired and handed the Australian side victory, while poor Frans Ludeke was reduced to helplessly yelling Pale! Pale! Pale! (Poles! Poles! Poles!) into his walkie-talkie.
Rogue captains aside, the impression created is that coaches are only interested in players who play rugby based only on their structures and not on the situation.
This sounds great in theory, but no coach can take a team through 20-odd phases of an opposition side’s attack.
A great example of the robotic players created by coaches who are heavily reliant on structures is what happens when former Sharks and Springbok coach Ian McIntosh tries his favourite opening exercise at coaching clinics.
Ian Mac usually asks a team to form up and throws a ball at one of them, asking them to find their way to the try line.
After a series of simulated rucks playing shadow rugby by themselves, the winger or fullback usually scores, to which McIntosh says to the first player: “There was no one in front of you when I gave you the ball; why didn’t you run straight to the try line?”
I’m no big fan of cricket’s quirky system, which says the captain, not the coach, runs the team but gives the skipper credit for wins and saddles the coach with defeats.
But our rugby could borrow from cricket to find ways to empower its captains to think independently.
Maybe a good but drastic start would be to do away with the walkie-talkies in the coach’s box. Granted, we’ll miss the entertainment of witnessing Heyneke Meyer scream at the device in mid-meltdown with a game on the line.
But it would be nice to see what the players would come up with if forced to think of their own solutions in real time during a match.
Put it this way – I’ve never seen an All Blacks coach scream anything into those call centre contraptions they wear, even with defeat pending.
. Follow me on Twitter @Simxabanisa
