England coach's Bok battleplan
England coach Stuart Lancaster has done his homework and believes he has the formula to end his team’s seven-match losing streak against the Springboks when they tour South Africa next month.
The new England boss impressed in his caretaker role during the Six Nations, and was rewarded for his team’s consistently competitive performances by being appointed to the job full-time, but the upcoming trip to South Africa will present a series of completely different challenges.
Lancaster, who named his touring squad on Friday, believes that the key for his side will be their mental approach, as the tour comes at the end of the European season and he wants to ensure that his team is focused on the challenge rather than just going through the motions.
He told the Daily Telegraph: “The mindset is crucial, I think England have approached end-of-season tours in the past feeling sorry for themselves, thinking it’s the end of a long, hard season.
“I talked to the players during the Six Nations about getting ready for the tour and asked them what would be different this time. I think it was Dylan Hartley who said, ‘It’s because we’re talking about it now’.
“Before, some players have taken the view that the season finished at the end of May and the tour was an add-on. If we have the mentality that we’re going to go there to front up, then that’s how we can begin to acquire the appropriate physicality. Get that right and you have a contest,” he explained.
The timing of the tour may even give Lancaster something of an advantage over his South African rival Heyneke Meyer, who will have to assemble his first team just a week after South African Super Rugby conference rivals the Bulls and Stormers go at each other in Pretoria.
The only fixture left this season is the Premiership Final between Harlequins and Leicester on May 26, which means that Lancaster should have a well-rested squad when they head down to face a Springbok team who would have had just one week together under their new coach.
Despite this slight advantage, Lancaster is desperate to understand the nature of the challenge before the team arrives in South Africa, and hired someone to arm him with information on Springbok rugby and the culture that his team will be confronted with in June.
He explained: “I wanted to know more about the texture of the country, the feel of the place, so I asked a guy to write a report on the culture of South African rugby, what makes them special as a rugby-playing nation, as well as providing analysis on the Bulls and the Stormers and on Heyneke Meyer [the new Springbok coach] and his probable coaching team.
“It made me aware of where rugby sits in the South African psyche, the impact of winning World Cups and how it seems to draw the nation together,” added Lancaster.
One factor that could count against them is their lack of experience in South African conditions, with Mike Brown, Toby Flood and David Strettle the only players who have represented England in South Africa before.
Lancaster himself first visited South Africa only a couple of weeks ago when he met up with former All Blacks backline coach Wayne Smith in Durban to try and persuade the current Chiefs assistant coach to move to Twickenham.
That dream never materialised and Lancaster has had to make do with 2003 World Cup-winner Mike Catt instead, but the trip to the tip of Africa was not completely in vain as he managed to do some more valuable research on the opposition to gain an understanding of what it will take to beat them.
“Whilst I was there I saw the column inches devoted to the sport in the newspapers. Here we are dominated by football. There it was rugby. I also bought and read the autobiographies of Butch James, Victor Matfield, John Smit and Jake White.
“It will certainly be a learning experience for me, but so was going to the Stade de France to play France and taking on Ireland at Twickenham. I hadn’t done either of those six months ago,” he said.
