With World Cup euphoria dying down and attention going back to the Vodacom United Rugby Championship, Leinster’s coup in appointing World Cup-winning coach Jacques Nienaber as an assistant to Leo Cullen is likely to turn out to be a masterstroke.
Nienaber surprised many a few months ago with his decision to join Cullen’s side and while many may still wonder why he made the decision, it is clear that he will be a massive boost for Leinster’s hopes in the URC.
Despite dominating the Pro14 league and having a massive say in Europe over the past few years, Leinster have stumbled since the formation of the URC, losing to the Vodacom Bulls in the semifinal in the championship’s opening year and then against eventual champions Munster at the same stage last season.
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It is clear that Nienaber’s success with the Springboks will make them stronger and while it is still an open question when exactly he will join the side after basking in the Boks’ success on their recent trophy tour, Nienaber will arrive with a wealth of experience, an intimate knowledge of the Irish game and instantly become a threat to South African franchises with his knowledge of the players and how they work.
In short, Cullen’s decision to appoint Nienaber is a stroke of genius and the envy of the rest of the league, as Nienaber brings so many positives that you can only seeing it making Leinster stronger.
Cullen told media that while there haven’t been specific conversations about Nienaber’s role in the team, they were sure it would sort itself out when he arrives.
“We’ve been in contact a lot in the past few weeks, with Elmarie, his wife, as well. They’re excited about it, it’s a different challenge for them. It’s a nice fit, I feel,” Cullen said.
“Maybe it surprised a few people at the time it was announced seven or eight months ago. But I’m excited about how it all might blend together.
“I’m not quite sure exactly how it is all going to blend together. But we’ll figure it out as we go.”
“We just need to get it right on the day. Not just part of the day, but all of it. That was the initial conversation with Jacques. It’s a bit of that winning mindset.
“Hopefully that will be a big addition for us, for our guys. It’s a different voice for the group and again, it’s just the evolution of our players that have come through the similar-type systems.
“To experience something completely different, a different way of looking at the same game. I think it will hopefully be a positive piece.”
Cullen said that the way the Springboks under Nienaber had embraced the fundamentals of the game impressed him, and he hoped that would rub off on Leinster’s campaign.
“They do things slightly differently. Like there’s beauty in simplicity. The majority of their game, there is a simplicity to the way they play the game. Which is good.
“Because the game has to be based on strong fundamentals and all the rest. There are always little things they will try to push the boundaries on, in terms of law or how they interpret different things. They are a creative bunch and it is a phenomenal success that they have had.”
And Nienaber’s arrival has impressed others, with former Leinster player and current Irish pundit Bernard Jackman singing his praises in his column in the Irish Independent.
“He will add something new to the team on and off the field, and their defence can be better for sure.
“It rarely gets exposed, to be fair, but as teams look to copy others that have beaten them by keeping the ball, it’s important to be even more destructive in defence and to use it as a weapon.
“Nienaber’s system is high-risk, high-reward and he seems to have an exceptional ability to coach it. All the South African teams try and use a similar system, but no one implements it like he does.
“Nienaber’s defence works well in part because the overall game plan is very much aligned with defence.”
Another coach who is incredibly impressed with Nienaber and believes he will have a positive impact is former Munster assistant Jerry Flannery, who with Felix Jones coached alongside Nienaber and Rassie Erasmus during their stint at Munster.
“Felix and I were both very lucky,” he said in a recent interview in The Times. “We really got to learn about the art of coaching from Jacques and then got to see how Rassie operated an environment. Jacques is a phenomenally hard worker.
“Say he’d been scouting the Scarlets, he’d come in with reams of analysis, all organised by proximity to where they win the ball — every single angle off their lineout or scrum attack. But then he would boil it all down into simple messages for the players. He would give them cues to watch — and because he was a qualified physio, he could communicate from the touchline during a game, which was another advantage.
“I hadn’t been enjoying coaching until that point. Maybe my expectations had been too high. In no other industry do you go from zero to executive level. By watching Jacques, I could see how you could make a difference. It was just brilliant the way he simplified things so that players didn’t have to over-think when they were playing, which is great coaching.
“There would be no filler, just the point. Combine that with the fact that they simplified the game anyway. As a coach you can feel like you need to pad things out at times and it muddies the message. When he talked about tackling an opponent, Jacques would just say: ‘I want you to sign your name on his jersey.’ He had been in the military with Rassie.
“He qualified as a physio and then he qualified as an S&C coach, so he was looking at rugby with fresh eyes. That was reflected in the instructions he gave. So many coaches coach in rugby-speak, not just to get to the point quicker but sometimes to sound clever, to say: don’t challenge me on this. Jacques made the message simple, yet it was all based on hours of analysis.”
As the World Cup euphoria starts to die down and the hard work of starting to form a squad to defend the back-to-back titles begins again, embedded in a four-pronged URC challenge, South African teams and supporters will begin to realise how much they have lost.
And how much Leinster has gained in snapping him up.
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