Think or perish, rugby gurus warn Boks

Until South African players start thinking for themselves and stop being robots, South African backplay will continue to fall alarmingly behind the standards being set by inventive teams like the ACT Brumbies and Otago Highlanders.

This warning comes from two great Springboks backs, Ray Mordt and Danie Gerber, who played many of their Tests together as one of modern rugby's most potent centre/wing combinations in the golden era of the 1980s.

"A coach, no matter how gifted and capable of imparting his knowledge can only do so much. Ultimately, it's up to the players to think for themselves and to take the correct options, almost instinctively," said Mordt, who is concerned that the gap between Australian/New Zealand backplay and the Springboks will continue to widen unless our players can be made to take more responsibility for what happens on the field.

It's a view reinforced by Gerber, who is even more outspoken: "Players today want everything done for them. In our day, when I played with Ray and Carel (Du Plessis), we didn't need coaches to tell us what to do and how to play.

"We could do all those things for ourselves and we were left alone to do it," he emphasised.

Gerber, at 42, has turned to coaching and is helping the Pumas' backline with coach Chris Grobler, while Mordt had several successful years with both the Springboks and the Lions and hopes, in the not too distant future, to turn his hand again to it at a high level.

So the two gifted runners - Mordt scored 18 tries from 12 Tests, including two hat tricks while Gerber dotted down 19 tries in 24 Tests - have seen rugby life from both sides of the divide.

Listen again to Mordt: "Our modern players are lacking in how best to use their pace and power because they don't think for themselves. So they often limit their own effectiveness by never setting themselves up to run the right angles or to hit the spaces at top speed."

Gerber takes up the inside running from his former Springbok team-mate: "Compare our backs with some of the top Wallabies like Stephen Larkham, who sends his outside backs away at pace to run into gaps from deep positions. I have never been a fan of running flat ball. But we seem to be obsessed with flat ball."

The only problem, according to Gerber, is that we don't have too many good enough to play it like Henry Honiball.

Now that the rangy Natal Springbok is no longer around, we are in deep trouble if we persist with it and use players to monotonously crash ball at defenders close to rucks and mauls.

Gerber again: "I watched Gaffie du Toit trying to break the line for the Sharks in a recent match when he was virtually standing still. How can you hope to do it? The tackler will simply knock you back and the ball is usually lost."