Who can step in for Big Vic?

Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer recently told a story that underlines Victor Matfield's genius in a way the player himself couldn't even explain in his own book.

Meyer said that, as part of his preparation, the Bok lock obtains footage of the opposition's lineouts, complete with audio.

He then sits for about six hours and decodes it by listening to the audio of the lock's calls to where the hooker throws until he cracks the codes.

Besides proving how seriously the Bulls lock takes his work, it is an anecdote that goes a long way towards outlining the enormity of the task facing any young lock dreaming of being the next Matfield.

Just how much hard work it is was shown by his absence from the Boks' first Rugby Championship Test against Argentina. Even with the mitigating factor of an unseasonable Highveld downpour, the Bok lineout was rudderless without Matfield.

The fact that eighthman Duane Vermeulen, and not No5 Lood de Jager, was calling the lineouts exposed the paucity of like-for-like replacements for Matfield.

Many people think replacing Matfield is simply about finding the taller and skinnier of the two locks. The image is complete if said athletic beanpole also happens to like hanging around at outside centre and routinely checks out his hair on the big screen.

But a Matfield-type player in South Africa tends to be five years in the making, thanks to our penchant for producing blunt objects (think Bakkies, Flip, Eben, Lood) who only like to hurt people.

There's the change in body type (Matfield weighed 120kg when he started), and then there's the lineout itself. Keeping your weight down is the least of your problems as the lineout is where the real hard slog is.

Meyer says in a typical lineout a team has up to eight options to throw to and four variations of play. It doesn't sound like much when you add up the numbers.

But the catch is that each variation has its own subplots, and the player who calls the lineouts has to memorise all the calls for them. Then there is working out what the opposition is trying to do and trying to counter it...

The bigger problems for the Boks are that they don't have five years to turn De Jager, Pieter-Steph du Toit or Stephan Lewies into a Matfield by next year's World Cup, and few teams' game plans hinge on the lineout more than the South Africans'. Because the scrum can be a penalty fest waiting to happen and the rucks a lottery, and because the Boks like to play territorial rugby, their lineout work has to be precise.

It is when Matfield is around, and it's a shambles when he isn't.

Some might wonder why the fuss if Matfield is going to the World Cup next year. At 37 he has reached that age where minor niggles develop a life of their own.

A fortnight ago his knee injury should have cost him one Rugby Championship match-fee appearance. Now it looks as if it could well be five.

With that in mind, it would be a brave coach who doesn't want to make sure he has a ready-made solution for the eventuality that Matfield's body will fail him.

But one doubts that the born-free locks of today could be persuaded to give up their power-nap, PlayStation and Instagram time between training sessions to fit in the studying of lineout footage.

Either way, what the Boks need more than anything else before the World Cup is a ready replacement for Matfield.