Toetie's still in his honeymoon phase

31 August 2016 - 09:49 By Archie Henderson

Everyone is now either second-guessing Allister Coetzee or calling for his head. Even those not calling for his head appear to be calling for it, but in veiled terms. He has the backing of Saru and should be confident the knives aren't out yetCoetzee is going nowhere and he is not about to throw the Boks out with the bathwater. At least I hope not.What the Springboks' coach needs to do is shrug off the defeat in Argentina and be grateful he's not the Wallabies' coach.Michael Cheika lost it on Saturday. After the Wallabies' sixth defeat in a row under his watch you can't blame him, but the way in which he lost it has made the big, tough former Randwick No8 look like a crybaby. One New Zealand pundit spoke about his "demeanour" not being good for Australian rugby. As euphemisms go, it was pretty damning.From rolling his eyes to feigning perplexity in the coaching box - where his performances are as hysterical, and as entertaining, as Heyneke Meyer's - Cheika left himself open to ridicule, and not a little manipulation.Steve Hansen, the All Blacks' coach, is almost as inscrutable as Eddie Jones - and as shrewd. He trumped Cheika's complaints about the referee favouring the ABs before the game and ignoring the Wallabies' captain during it with a piece of slick anticipation.On the morning of Saturday's match against the Wallabies, Hansen came out with the story of the team room in the All Blacks' hotel having been bugged. It ensured that anything the Wallabies' coach would come up with after the game would be very much secondary to the big story of the day.As a bit of boondoggle it was Machiavellian, implying that Cheika would stoop to espionage. But it was really all nonsense. For any opponents to get their hands on the All Blacks' line-out codes, game plan or entire playbook would still not guarantee victory. That's how good this generation of ABs are.So as Coetzee's Boks prepare to take on Cheika's Wallabies in Brisbane next week, South Africa's coach must know that this is not the time of foreboding. He should ignore the chattering classes of South African rugby and understand that the Wallabies are rattled: their line-out is virtually non-existent, their defence suspect and their attack - once an Australia strong point - weaker than it's ever been. And their coach will still be smarting.Coetzee must resist the temptation to fiddle with his team. This is no time to cast off Elton Jantjies and hark back to Morné Steyn. Heavens, no!Even a difficult decision on his captain, Adrian Strauss, can be left for another day. Strauss, like John Smit before him, is not the best hooker in the country (Malcolm Marx, on current form, is that) but the Boks did not lose to Ireland and Argentina because of poor captaincy.Coetzee can keep faith with the players he has chosen because this is a honeymoon period for the Springbok coach, even though you wouldn't have thought so. He has the backing of the SA Rugby Union and should be confident that the real knives are not out - yet.And when the time comes to play the All Blacks in about three weeks, who knows, they might be so complacent that we can catch them on a bad day. Well, we can bloody dream, can't we?..

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