Brandt plotting Madibas' revolution
NMMU have had their backs against the wall throughout the 2010 edition of the FNB Varsity Cup presented by Steinhoff International, but coach Kolie Brandt is quietly busy laying the foundation for a competitive Madibas side in years to come.
The Port Elizabeth-based side suffered heavy defeats in the first four rounds of everybody’s favourite student competition (conceding more than fifty points each time), but they earned their first point this past Monday in a narrow (24-31) home loss to last year’s beaten finalists, Pukke.
Brandt has seen a constant improvement in his young squad this year, and is hoping that this selfsame improvement will continue as the 2010 tournament reaches its climax.
“The boys played much better [against Pukke],” he told varsitycup.co.za.
“A bounce here and there and we could have won. More importantly, however, the guys are improving with every game and I hope that we can keep stepping up.”
Defence and set-pieces have been the biggest stumbling blocks in the Madibas’ season thus far, but after a good second half against Tukkies in Pretoria last week, Monday saw a much-improved display for the Eastern Cape outfit at their home ground in PE.
“We started to play well against Tukkies in the second half [last week],” said Brandt, “so I kept the same combinations from that game – apart from a few injury-enforced changes. I tweaked a few things in the scrums and in the backline and, as a result, there was a huge improvement in the first-time tackling and at lineout time.”
Along with their steady improvement, Brandt revealed that a good bond had also started to form amongst the players and that they were all responding well towards his philosophy – where a strong team ethic is quite simply “non-negotiable”.
“We’ve started to lay the foundations for a better side for next season,” explained Brandt.
“Look, this is a new side. The guys are starting to get to know each other and, because of that, are starting to put their bodies on the line for each other,” he added.
“It is something that I drill into them all the time – rugby is about the game and about the team, nothing else. You have to play the game for the sake of the game and the team, it has been like that for me for forty or fifty years of being involved in the game – so for me, that is non-negotiable.”
Although Oom Kolie praised his young charges for their “never-say-die” attitude, he acknowledges that determination alone would not see the Madibas be consistently competitive in a tournament where the level is “phenomenally high”.
“They [the NMMU players] never give up, but that’s not enough, we need to cancel out the little mistakes that keep costing us,” he said. “But that will happen as they grow as a team together.
“It [the level of play] is like chalk and cheese from where the tournament started two years ago,” he continued. “The level is phenomenally high and, as a result, there is not a big margin for error.”
A final league match-up against TUT is looming large as a battle to avoid the Wooden Spoon in this year’s Varsity Cup, but Brandt – at this stage – is not looking beyond the Madibas’ trip to Johannesburg, where they will come up against UJ, on Monday (kick-off 6.30pm).
“We’re taking it one step at a time,” said the determined Madibas mentor.
“We are not even thinking of that final game yet. My focus now is next week’s game against UJ and that is the focus of the players as well.”
By Tim Human
