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Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer
Cape Town – John Smit looked every bit as awkward as he was deflated when he received his gold Springbok cap as the dust settled on his team’s Vodacom Tri-Nations Test defeat against the All Blacks in Soweto on Saturday.
As ceremony goes, it was about as flat as the garter being tossed at a wedding with the married couple already well on the road and the cleaners placing the chairs on the tables and mopping up the spilled wine.
You had to feel for him. This distinguished servant, on the occasion of his 100th appearance for South Africa, deserved a more fitting backdrop … but international sporting combat makes no great room for sentiment, of course.
The brutal reality is that the captain’s milestone was marred by the humiliation of his team’s fourth reverse on the trot, which leaves the 2009 champions in danger now of finishing this season’s competition with the wooden spoon.
Yes, even behind the still-in-transition Australians, unless they knock the Wallabies over in successive encounters in Pretoria and Bloemfontein.
Here’s a bit of solace: there was probably enough evidence, from a significantly re-jigged Bok side, to suggest that job can be done, despite the gut-wrenching late surrender to the home and dry New Zealanders.
But these remain choppy waters for Peter de Villiers, Smit and company, with a restoration of spirit and – for the most part -- defensive alignment and energy still not enough to prevent a 3-0 reverse to the old enemy this season.
Tellingly, the longer this enthralling match went on the likelier the classy and composed All Blacks were to win it, despite the Boks somehow leading 22-17 until the 78th minute when the first of two visiting tries in rapid succession engineered the turnaround.
And this on the Highveld, where the team to lose its puff as the clock ticks down is not normally supposed to be the Springboks.
It is in this area, sadly, where the veteran Smit himself will remain as shrouded in doubt about his durability and mobility as any of his team-mates, downed by a side who not only looked more polished with ball in hand but were almost certainly better conditioned as well.
Not even the benefit of several weeks off in mid-tournament was enough to fill the collective Springbok tank with the required level of “juice”, and maybe there were some lessons for the important year or so ahead that a bunch of greenhorns, for the most part, spearheaded an improved effort from the host side.
Players to fall into this category included that terrier-like little midfielder Juan de Jongh, Francois Hougaard, who delivered an all-action and highly competent performance at scrumhalf, and a claret-stained Flip van der Merwe who got stuck in commendably in the second row.
It was not as though the more seasoned Bok players were all-embracingly off their best: Schalk Burger scrapped quite brilliantly for the bulk of the outing (though you do wince a wee bit when man-of-the-match goes to a member of the losing, home-town side) and the return of no-fuss gladiator Juan Smith made a huge difference at blindside flank.
Jean de Villiers, lambasted by some wags in the build-up for a perception that he is some sort of revolving door defensively at No 12, rather muzzled his knockers as well: he was much more a firmly padlocked gate, I thought.
But Smit, harsh as it may sound to say so on his seismic and rightly emotion-charged day, did relatively little to suggest that his never-doubted leadership skills are being accompanied by the required lustre at hooker as he enters the dangerous twilight phase of his career.
For a while, it looked as if his decent ballast at scrum-time was going to aid a South African quest at dominance of that department, but as the game unfolded fortunes seemed to swing notably the other way.
His lineout throwing was not without blemish – most notably when he was irritatingly penalised for taking too long over one – but his worst moment came when he missed a key tackle on Ma’a Nonu which led to the decisive All Black try at the finish by substitute Israel Dagg.
The tree-trunk centre, of course, needs no second invitation to rampage over the advantage line.
Self-effacing and honourable man that he is and always has been, Smit took the rap for his error in the immediate after-match interview, but it will really only have fired up his detractors further.
Oh yes, and a couple of hours later, and not terribly far down the drag, a certain Bismarck du Plessis, in only his third outing back from long-term injury, was honoured as star performer as the Sharks thoroughly outgunned Western Province in the engine room to seize leadership of the Absa Currie Cup at the midway mark.
Du Plessis, who was a standout in the Bok No 2 shirt while Smit admirably took on the tighthead prop challenge last year, was all restless energy, bullocking away in the tight-loose alongside a similarly refocused Beast Mtawarira and exhibiting several times his known flair for the wicked handoff.
No, for a variety of reasons this day did not pan out quite as John William Smit would have wished it to.
There is mounting pressure on Smit, and on his national team, although we did see a semblance of renewal and just maybe the vast nucleus of this combo will be permitted to transfer onward to Loftus.
A win there? Quite emphatically non-negotiable.
The likelihood of Smit leading a defence of the World Cup in 2011 could well hang on it.
Cape Town – John Smit looked every bit as awkward as he was deflated when he received his gold Springbok cap as the dust settled on his team’s Vodacom Tri-Nations Test defeat against the All Blacks in Soweto on Saturday.
As ceremony goes, it was about as flat as the garter being tossed at a wedding with the married couple already well on the road and the cleaners placing the chairs on the tables and mopping up the spilled wine.
You had to feel for him. This distinguished servant, on the occasion of his 100th appearance for South Africa, deserved a more fitting backdrop … but international sporting combat makes no great room for sentiment, of course.
The brutal reality is that the captain’s milestone was marred by the humiliation of his team’s fourth reverse on the trot, which leaves the 2009 champions in danger now of finishing this season’s competition with the wooden spoon.
Yes, even behind the still-in-transition Australians, unless they knock the Wallabies over in successive encounters in Pretoria and Bloemfontein.
Here’s a bit of solace: there was probably enough evidence, from a significantly re-jigged Bok side, to suggest that job can be done, despite the gut-wrenching late surrender to the home and dry New Zealanders.
But these remain choppy waters for Peter de Villiers, Smit and company, with a restoration of spirit and – for the most part -- defensive alignment and energy still not enough to prevent a 3-0 reverse to the old enemy this season.
Tellingly, the longer this enthralling match went on the likelier the classy and composed All Blacks were to win it, despite the Boks somehow leading 22-17 until the 78th minute when the first of two visiting tries in rapid succession engineered the turnaround.
And this on the Highveld, where the team to lose its puff as the clock ticks down is not normally supposed to be the Springboks.
It is in this area, sadly, where the veteran Smit himself will remain as shrouded in doubt about his durability and mobility as any of his team-mates, downed by a side who not only looked more polished with ball in hand but were almost certainly better conditioned as well.
Not even the benefit of several weeks off in mid-tournament was enough to fill the collective Springbok tank with the required level of “juice”, and maybe there were some lessons for the important year or so ahead that a bunch of greenhorns, for the most part, spearheaded an improved effort from the host side.
Players to fall into this category included that terrier-like little midfielder Juan de Jongh, Francois Hougaard, who delivered an all-action and highly competent performance at scrumhalf, and a claret-stained Flip van der Merwe who got stuck in commendably in the second row.
It was not as though the more seasoned Bok players were all-embracingly off their best: Schalk Burger scrapped quite brilliantly for the bulk of the outing (though you do wince a wee bit when man-of-the-match goes to a member of the losing, home-town side) and the return of no-fuss gladiator Juan Smith made a huge difference at blindside flank.
Jean de Villiers, lambasted by some wags in the build-up for a perception that he is some sort of revolving door defensively at No 12, rather muzzled his knockers as well: he was much more a firmly padlocked gate, I thought.
But Smit, harsh as it may sound to say so on his seismic and rightly emotion-charged day, did relatively little to suggest that his never-doubted leadership skills are being accompanied by the required lustre at hooker as he enters the dangerous twilight phase of his career.
For a while, it looked as if his decent ballast at scrum-time was going to aid a South African quest at dominance of that department, but as the game unfolded fortunes seemed to swing notably the other way.
His lineout throwing was not without blemish – most notably when he was irritatingly penalised for taking too long over one – but his worst moment came when he missed a key tackle on Ma’a Nonu which led to the decisive All Black try at the finish by substitute Israel Dagg.
The tree-trunk centre, of course, needs no second invitation to rampage over the advantage line.
Self-effacing and honourable man that he is and always has been, Smit took the rap for his error in the immediate after-match interview, but it will really only have fired up his detractors further.
Oh yes, and a couple of hours later, and not terribly far down the drag, a certain Bismarck du Plessis, in only his third outing back from long-term injury, was honoured as star performer as the Sharks thoroughly outgunned Western Province in the engine room to seize leadership of the Absa Currie Cup at the midway mark.
Du Plessis, who was a standout in the Bok No 2 shirt while Smit admirably took on the tighthead prop challenge last year, was all restless energy, bullocking away in the tight-loose alongside a similarly refocused Beast Mtawarira and exhibiting several times his known flair for the wicked handoff.
No, for a variety of reasons this day did not pan out quite as John William Smit would have wished it to.
There is mounting pressure on Smit, and on his national team, although we did see a semblance of renewal and just maybe the vast nucleus of this combo will be permitted to transfer onward to Loftus.
A win there? Quite emphatically non-negotiable.
The likelihood of Smit leading a defence of the World Cup in 2011 could well hang on it.
