There is no way of finding out, but it would be interesting to know if England coach Steve Borthwick would have chosen Freddie Steward as his fullback for Saturday’s Test at Twickenham had he known that Manie Libbok was going to be the Springbok starting flyhalf.
By choosing the safe as a house under the high ball but perhaps a bit slow across the field Steward ahead of the more attacking minded and explosive George Furbank, Borthwick has telegraphed his intent to set up England like they were set up in last year’s World Cup semi-final. He’s sacrificing an attacking dynamic for the safety first and ugly rugby method employed by England the last time they met the Boks, which was in Paris last October.
England nearly prevailed with that approach in the RWC playoff game. They were a few minutes from winning it when Handre Pollard kicked the winning goal. Pollard played as a replacement then, and he will again in this game, but would Borthwick have been expecting that? Manie Libbok did wear the No10 against England in Paris, and was replaced before halftime.
But that was a game played in wet and windy conditions. In other words, conditions that suited the England playing style, which in the days before their own evolution started post World Cup, was ultra-conservative and very narrow. They also weren’t conditions suited to Libbok’s ability to bring width to the Bok game by creating threats all over the field.
TEAM ANNOUNCEMENTS MAY MEAN ADVANTAGE RASSIE
The forecast for London on match day is clouds and a chilly 11 degrees, which you’d anticipate at this time of the year, but no rain. In other words, conditions better suited to the kind of attacking game Libbok produced against Argentina seven weeks ago and, lest it be forgotten, when the Boks hammered New Zealand 35-7 in a World Cup warmup game last August.
That was the last time Libbok played at Twickenham, so it is a stadium that will have good memories for him, as indeed it will for many of the Boks given that it has become a bit of home from home for the South African national team (they hosted Wales there in June).
Pollard is of course a world class flyhalf, and these days rugby is about squads of 23 and not teams of 15, so it wouldn’t be strictly correct to say he’s been dropped for this game. He will have a role to play, and should there be a clutch kick required to win it at the death, most South Africans will heave a sigh of relief that he is on the field.
But Libbok is the less predictable player and the greater attacking threat. It didn’t happen in Paris because of the wet weather, but a dry game could see Libbok testing Steward’s pace, or lack of it, across the back field in a different way to what Pollard might have. So did the respective team announcements on Thursday represent a first strike in favour of Bok coach Rassie Erasmus? It may well have been.
Erasmus justified his reversion to a five/three split on the bench from the radical seven/one of Edinburgh a week ago by talking about the Bok backs needing energy to deal with the England kicking game, but his choice of flyhalf also points to him wanting to exploit the clear deficiencies in the England defensive system that was exposed by the All Blacks and Wallabies over the past fortnight.
VISITORS HAVE THREATS ACROSS THE PARK
The last time the Boks played England at Twickenham was 2022. That was the day that the Boks sent the then England coach Eddie Jones into the ranks of the unemployed, but also the day they showed the world that they can hurt top teams with more than just their forward orientated, physical game.
Damian Willemse was at the heart of that win with his X-factor moments on a day when he played flyhalf and he is not there now, but there are others, including Libbok, who can do something similar.
There does appear to be a lot of attention being paid by England towards what worked for 65 minutes against the Boks last October, and also there’s been a lot of talk, led by former England player Courtney Lawes who is now a columnist for The Times, about this being a grudge game for the team he was part of in that RWC match.
He was referencing the fall out from the alleged racial slur from Bongi Mbonambi to Tom Curry, which actually should be stored more in the memory banks of the Boks for they had a World Cup final to play so it should have been more of an irritation to them, as well as the agonising way England lost. He wrote that there was a lot of antagonism between the two sides.
DUBLIN WAS EXAMPLE OF HOW REVENGE CAN TRIP YOU UP
That may be so, and the way Borthwick is setting up for the game suggests revenge is very much a driving force for England. But if you want to learn from history how that can backfire you only have to go back a week – the talkative Irish wanted to avenge their World Cup quarter final defeat against the All-Blacks last week but they came up short because they were perhaps too amped for it, with their discipline letting them down against team that conceded only five penalties.
More than that, and for reasons that go beyond just the anticipated weather conditions, England are up against a very different challenge on Saturday in comparison to last October, with the Boks having added layers to their game that mean they now have more ways to win.
The lineout effort will have to be much improved on last week for the Boks, and they will also know that the selection of Sam Underhill as the England openside flank means the hosts will be coming at them at the breakdown, thus trying to force mistakes at the fringes, in the same way as the Scots did last week.
Given England’s telegraphed intent in this game, fullback Aphelele Fassi will have to be as steady as he has been all season in dealing with the aerial threat, and the Boks will know how dangerous Marcus Smith can be as the England flyhalf and will have worked on a plan to blunt that threat. Indeed, considering this is the first time Smith is facing the Boks, and he brings a completely different dynamic to Owen Farrell and George Ford, it might be fortuitous for the Boks that they got to prepare for this challenge by playing against the even more dangerous Finn Russell last week.
OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE A STATEMENT
Speaking of dangerous attacking flyhalves, it goes without saying that Libbok will have to kick his goals, something he did not have to do last time he played in the Mbombela game or at least get a reasonable return from his efforts. But at the same time, there are massive areas of improvement in key areas, such as the defence, required by England or they will find that the Boks won’t be building their score in increments of three but in fives.
The revenge angle might not be there for the Boks like it is for England. They will have stored away some of the unsavoury elements of last year’s game and the way the English media behaved around it in the memory bank, for sure, but just as was the case in Dublin last week, a team is living in dreamland if it thinks winning a game in the autumn, described by recently retired England prop Joe Marler as “no more than glorified friendlies”, is proper revenge for what happens in a World Cup playoff game.
For the South Africans, like with New Zealand last week, this is more an opportunity to make a statement in their big match of this tour. And the way Erasmus has set up his selection, they have different ways they can go about doing that. If England go Lawes’ suggested route of going ugly and keeping it narrow, the Boks do have the material to meet that challenge. They also have the material and material to win it by going wide.
If the Boks manage to mix it up, which they did with such telling effect against Argentina in the last weekend of September, England might find themselves well outside their comfort zone.
Make no mistake, England can win this game. Any team that beats Ireland, as they did in February, has the ability to push any team. But, like last October’s game in Paris, it will require the Boks to be off their best. If the Boks bring their A-game, there will be only one winner.
TEAMS
England: Freddie Steward, Tommy Freeman, Ollie Lawrence, Henry Slade, Ollie Sleighthome, Marcus Smith, Jack van Poorvliet, Ben Earl, Sam Underhill, Chandler Cunningham-South, George Martin, Maro Itoje, Will Stuart, Jamie George (captain), Ellis Genge. Replacements: Luke Cowan-Dickie, Fin Baxter, Dan Cole, Nick Isiekwe, Alex Dombrandt, Harry Randall, Goerge Ford, Tom Roebuck.
South Africa: Aphelele Fassi, Cheslin Kolbe, Jesse Kriel, Damian de Allende, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Manie Libbok, Grant Williams, Jasper Wiese, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Siya Kolisi (captain), RG Snyman, Eben Etzebeth, Wilco Louw, Bongi Mbonambi, Ox Nche. Replacements: Malcolm Marx, Gerhard Steenekamp, Vincent Koch, Elrigh Louw, Kwagga Smith, Cobus Reinach, Handre Pollard, Lukhanyo Am.
Referee: Andrew Brace (Ireland).
Kick-off: 19.40
Prediction: South Africa to win by more than a score
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