One of the happy by-products of the Lions’ success in recent years is that the precinct around Ellis Park, for so long a grimy part of Joburg, has been spruced up.

Trees have been planted, pavements swept and weeds ripped out. Even the vagrants have moved on.

All that remains to be done is for a statue to be built in honour of Johan Ackermann, their departing coach and the man who relentlessly pursued his vision of rugby perfection.

This may seem like overstating his influence, but when he arrived, the Lions were a mess. John Mitchell had been shown the door and they had endured a season in the Super Rugby wilderness.

It’s not just that Ackermann has excelled as coach of the Lions. He’s wrought massive change in the way the team plays and the philosophy that drives them. Better still, he did it with a team long on heart but short on true class.

He took players like Warren Whiteley, who had few ambitions beyond provincial rugby, and Ross Cronje, a blue-collar player, and made them outstanding. Whiteley even became Springbok captain. Ackermann imbued them with purpose and motivation and their response was to go to the wall in his name.

He did this with many of his players, some of whom had been overlooked elsewhere, like Rohan Janse van Rensburg with the Bulls or Ruan Combrinck with Western Province. He recognised their skill and he pressed the buttons that needed pressing.

This was all part of a bigger plan, a plan grounded in the need to drag the team away from the prevailing dogma about how South African sides play. It was on a flight back from New Zealand some years ago, bewailing another run of bad results, that he and former Sharks man Swys de Bruin decided a change of tack was needed.

They quickly got to work, embracing a free-wheeling style of running and passing that is beyond compare locally. Others try and emulate it, but the truth is that it was a slow process that was years in the making. Getting buy-in from the players was vital, but Ackerman was convinced they’d become believers if they saw the results.

It wasn’t enough that they simply played attractive rugby. Any team can throw the ball around. It had to be winning rugby too.

The irony is that Ackermann himself was the stereotypical SA player: big, strong, gruff and assured, as far removed from eye-catching as you could get. Even now, it’s hard to credit his coaching style with his manner, which continues to be subdued and low-key.

So much for appearances. Indeed, he’s wearing a beard that he’s cultivated since March. The players put him up to it, insisting he not cut it until they’re next beaten.

The pity is that he’ll shortly be signing off to take up a contract in the UK with Gloucester. It’s an unfancied club that has struggled in the past 10 years. But it’s the sort of challenge the South African will relish.

Although he’s routinely been mentioned in dispatches about the Springbok coaching job, Ackermann himself has wavered. He’s still cutting his teeth as a coach. What would be ideal, though, is for him to pick up a few years’ experience in England, where the demands are much different, and add another layer to his coaching credentials.

Surrounded by the influence of the four home unions, he’ll return a better, more rounded coach and be in a prime position to make a run for a senior post.

Ackermann’s influence locally has been significant. The Stormers have moved away from their defensive game plan, expanding their horizons with a faster, more fluid game. The Sharks, too, are embellishing their attack without surrendering their fundamentals.

Ironically, it is probably the Kings who are the closest in style and ambition to the Lions, a style rooted in conditioning and confidence.

When Ackermann takes his final walk down the Ellis Park tunnel, we should celebrate him as an innovator and pioneer. He was the one brave enough to believe in a new way and make it work.

South African rugby is much the richer for it. – © Sunday Tribune

The rugby world hasn’t quite been knocked off its axis, but thanks to the feat of the British and Irish Lions, our customary worship of the All Blacks is perhaps misplaced.

Like two formidable heavyweights slugging it out for 12 hard rounds, only for the bout to be declared a draw, the Lions and All Blacks served up a feast that ultimately resolved nothing. What it revealed was that our collective dismissal of northern hemisphere rugby and our veneration of the All Blacks are both wrong.

The latter point is especially encouraging from a South African viewpoint. The Rugby Championship has become uncompetitive, not because the All Blacks are so dominant, but because the chasing pack have been so ordinary and under-powered.

The Springboks went through the wringer last year, but even in the years preceding 2016 they struggled to stay the pace with New Zealand. Two wins in the past 15 Tests is a miserable return.

I once put it to Jake White that our players looked afraid of taking on the All Blacks. He laughed, explaining that was a figment of my imagination. The likes of Schalk Burger, Bryan Habana and Bakkies Botha relished the challenge, White assured. Even so, in the past few years our teams have largely been incapable of matching them.

The Lions punctured that sense of All Blacks’ invincibility by doing the things the Boks talk of but seldom execute. Flooding the breakdown, closing space, defending accurately, kicking cleverly and punching hard on attack. These were hallmarks of the Lions’ game. They knocked the All Blacks off their rhythm and the result was a pock-marked affair that dented their formidable aura.

Even Beauden Barrett, the world’s best player, looked mortal as he flitted between good and ordinary. His goalkicking was rubbish with five misses in the second and third Tests.

Unsurprisingly, a sense of alarm has since run through New Zealand, almost as if their heroes are on the verge of flatlining. This is an over-reaction, but it says much about their inherent excellence that anything but an A-plus performance is deemed unworthy. Steve Hansen, who is as shrewd as they come, won’t sit still for a single minute. The New Zealand playbook is being rewritten.

No-one’s saying that the All Blacks have fallen off the cliff, but even they have questions over depth, experience and execution. Suddenly not everything’s coming up roses.

There’s more change in the wind. Whatever you think of the referees in the recent series, and Romain Poite was grim, their collective refusal to bow down at the All Black temple was refreshing. Unlike in past years, when 50-50 decisions so often when New Zealand’s way, in 2017 the law book applied to them too. Sonny Bill Williams’ sending-off was a case in point. So too Jerome Garces penalising Charlie Faumuina for tackling Kyle Sinckler with his feet off the ground.

With officials no longer in thrall to the All Blacks, matches took on a different gloss. We can but hope the same applies in the Rugby Championship where Poite of all people will take charge of the Boks’ opening match against Argentina next month.

Ironically, it was he who sent off Bismarck du Plessis for his brutal – and legitimate – tackle on Dan Carter four years ago. Little wonder it’s so difficult to warm to referees.

The Boks will take great heart from the recent series. They’ve still got a long way to go, but there was enough evidence on show in their own 3-0 hammering of France to believe they are on the right road after the horrors of last year. They were organised, direct and powerful; qualities you need if the All Blacks are the opposition.

One final point: the Lions’ next stop is in SA in 2021. The demands of professionalism, not least the self-interest of the four home unions and assorted clubs, is threatening the very concept of the Lions. This is absurd and disappointing. The Lions are one of rugby’s great traditions and deserve to thrive, especially as they hang onto the last vestiges of proper touring.

Here’s hoping the Boks and the six or so other sides thrown into the mix in four years can muster a challenge as mighty and as memorable as this Lions jaunt. – © Sunday Tribune

Jannie du Plessis, the great Sharks man of the recent past, has a wonderfully quaint philosophy regarding criticism.

“When they say you’re good, you’re not as good as they say – and when they say you’re shit, you’re not as shit as they say.”

It’s a handy line that cuts both ways and fits the Springboks well given how they have veered from abysmal to outstanding in a few months. There are all sorts of caveats to those descriptions, suffice to say that six months is a long time in sport. So much can happen.

In November, the Boks appeared to have fallen off the cliff. They were a wreck. Now, halfway through the year, they look fresh, hungry and passionate. The joy and ambition which they demonstrated against France was a welcome sight to jaded, gatvol Springbok supporters.

France are a decent side and to put 30-plus points on them on three consecutive weekends wasn’t a happy accident.

We know the reasons for the turnaround. First, Allister Coetzee was given that most precious commodity – time. This season he also got to hire his assistants, chiefly Brendan Venter and Franco Smith, a pair of men not given to routine thinking.

After getting it wrong the first time, Coetzee was shrewder with his choice of captain, awarding the job to the dignified Warren Whiteley. He also selected a group of form Lions players, who were then allowed to play without tactical straitjackets.

There was also a return to the physical imperatives that have defined Bok rugby for so long. Venter might have introduced flash, but not at the expense of force. The defensive game was rigid and squeezed the life out of France.

It was evident, too, that the Boks were playing with a plan. They trusted the plan and carried it out with conviction. Coetzee, not usually given to unorthodoxy, must be lauded for taking the shackles off.

The building blocks are now in place for the greater challenge of the Rugby Championship. This is where the Boks will be measured because it was at this point last year that things began to unravel.

Also, in recent weeks we could sit back and watch the All Blacks engage in their ferocious series against the British and Irish Lions.

Two things are evident: the All Blacks are still staggeringly good, but, despite the reviews, not the best of all time. There have been three or four better teams.

No matter. They still set the standard and remain the scalp every half-decent team aspires to claim. The Lions punched big holes in them on occasion, but, as Steve Hansen said in the aftermath of the first Test, they can get down and dirty too. All the sleight of hand conjuring is useless without the grunt up front. They are brutal in the scrums and at the breakdowns. The Boks won’t need to be told this when they front up in a few weeks. Fortunately, that’s a part of the game they relish. It was more blunder than thunder last year, but the reliable old beast was back in form against France.

As the touring Lions demonstrated to a degree, you can throw New Zealand teams off kilter provided you do two things: front up physically and slow down and spoil their ball. This is easier said than done, granted, but teams that can keep their shape (and heads) have a chance. Ireland managed to do so in Chicago last November and the touring Lions managed it against the imperious Crusaders a few weeks back, knocking them back and getting in their faces.

This is what the Boks must aim for. Also, as Warren Gatland said, you must score tries if you are to have a hope against the All Blacks. Spoiling is fine, but your own game need to be imaginative and cutting and capable. Elton Jantjies enjoyed a stellar showing against France and must be similarly creative and daring in the Rugby Championship. A meek attitude will help no-one.

These are early days in the Springbok renaissance. The omens look promising. Beating the powerful All Blacks must be the goal, but for now all the trajectory need do is point north. Onwards and upwards. – © Sunday Tribune