17 September 2019, by: Sibusiso Mjikeliso

The Mismanagement of Elton Jantjies

AFTER the friendly Test against Japan a couple of weeks ago, you can easily read Rassie Erasmus’s plans for Elton Jantjies at the Rugby World Cup like a Paul Harris wrong’un.

And they do not involve having the Lions talisman occupying the drivers or even the front passenger seat when it comes to the flyhalf options available to the Springboks in the 31-man squad that’s in Japan.

Erasmus all but confirmed in his pre-match press conference when he announced the team to face Japan that the same team would do duty this weekend in Yokohama in the die-hard clash against the All Blacks.

That team did not include Jantjies in the match 23. Instead, it had Frans Steyn covering centre and pivot. Sure enough, Steyn came on for Handre Pollard in the 61stminute and proceeded to hand the Brave Roses their first and only open look at the try line with a stray pass, which the hosts gobbled down jealously.

It wasn’t the Steyn error that should have caused concern; it is that, if you read Erasmus’s hand, Jantjies (29) has been relegated to the third option pivot when not too long ago he was competing with Pollard for the primary option at 10.

Jantjies, it appears, is the kind of player who is stuck on a lab rat wheel: useful when the mad scientist has cooked up another experiment but not needed once the product goes to market.

He causes public amnesia, even without trying. Take for instance the international window that included the Rugby Championship title-winning campaign this past winter. John Robbie, the former Ireland scrumhalf, said ahead of South Africa’s friendly Test against Argentina at Loftus, said Jantjies still needed to prove himself in a Bok jersey.

But just three weeks prior, Jantjies had led the Boks to a clinical, if not unexpected win over the Wallabies at Ellis Park, where his namesake and halfback partner Herschel flourished on debut. The victory set the Springboks up to have a real go at the All Blacks in Wellington with a fresh team and thus a first title since it was known as the Tri-Nations 10 years ago.

“I played with Elton as my flyhalf and he kept me calm, so I was able to control the nerves on my Springbok debut,” said Herschel Jantjies when asked by the media about his whimsical debut in that Ellis Park Test.

Three weeks is a long time, it appears, in the world of Jantjies denigrators. You can imagine what this month between games will become for his reputation.

The mismanagement of Elton Jantjies has led to usually the detriment of what the team can potentially achieve. Chief Jantjies mismanager Allister Coetzee was the perfect example of this when, initially in 2013, he tried to turn Lewis Hamilton into a truck driver at the Stormers while Jantjies was there on loan.

It was a disaster. It was so bad in fact that Jantjies is still trying to win over some of the black and coloured Newlands supporters, who booed every error he made in the Boks’ defeat to England at a drenched Cape Town in 2018.

As Bok head coach, Coetzee played in the team Jantjies with all the enthusiasm of Mourad Boudjellal at an anger management conference. From 2016 to the end of 2017, Jantjies was the reluctant pilot of a plane headed for a nosedive.

Coetzee was handed one of the most enigmatic Lions playing compilations seen since the dawn of professional rugby – which made three straight Super Rugby finals. Somehow, he systematically undid all that when it came to Test level. 

Players who were used to beating Crusaders, Hurricanes, Waratahs, Bulls and other former winners, were suddenly reduced to eunuchs in the national jersey. And a lot of it had to do with how Jantjies was managed within the setup. 

Jantjies is the kind of player who needs honesty and trust from his coach. Sometimes he does need to get wrapped in cotton wool but he goes out onto the field looking for that match-winning magic touch. Johan Ackermann, in his time at the Lions from 2012 to 2017, understood this better than anyone else on the planet.

And so, going into this crucial match against the Kiwis on Saturday, Erasmus needs to understand that Jantjies has already bought into the role as the leader of the “B” team and the spearhead of the finishers on the bench.

He can up the tempo of the game in a way that Steyn no longer can and lest we forget, he was the closing flyhalf when the Boks beat the All Blacks in Wellington last year, where detractors were mute about his game management and defence under intense pressure.

Steyn can bring the versatility required off the bench and is a great option at 12 but is still some way off from bringing the dynamism that will make the Boks shift a couple of gears in the crucial final quarter of a game. At least not in the way Jantjies can.

And Jantjies knows Japan better than anyone else in the camp, having spent five years turning out for the NTT Shining Arcs.

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