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The message on the Leinster wall Nienaber has already taken to heart
By Liam Heagney
Jacques Nienaber has dived straight into work at Leinster and already put his hand up to take the blame for two of the three tries the Irish province conceded in their hard-fought URC derby win at Connacht last Saturday.
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The former Springboks head coach flew into Dublin last week to begin his new role as senior coach under Leo Cullen, a job he agreed to take on last April before his 2023 international season got going with South Africa and culminated in October’s Rugby World Cup final win over the All Blacks in Paris.
Leinster were left reliant on an 81st-minute try from Ciaran Frawley to snatch a 24-22 victory in Galway from the jaws of defeat. Ahead of next Sunday’s Champions Cup trip to La Rochelle, Nienaber has now given his first media briefing and in explaining how he can’t simply copy and paste the defensive system successfully employed by South Africa, he took responsibility for two of the Connacht tries scored by David Hawkshaw and Diarmuid Kilgallen.
“I can definitely adapt to Leinster,” began the coach who previously worked in Ireland as the Munster defence coach from June 2016 through to November 2017 when he returned home to South Africa with Rassie Erasmus to revive the Springboks.
“I don’t think you can copy and paste the system, any tackle-defence system from one team to another one because what makes the system is the athleticism that you have available within your squad and the skill set you have available within your squad and obviously the skill set and athleticism that South Africa has versus what Leinster have differs.
Ex-Springboks head coach Jacques Nienaber has given his first Irish media briefing as senior coach at Leinster. Liam Heagney 🎙️ asked the RugbyPass questions in Dublin. #Leinster #Springboks pic.twitter.com/xkgM28cMdv
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) December 5, 2023
“So you have a general broad way of how you would like to do things but you have to be able to evolve and adapt with the group that you are working with. Currently where I am now is trying to find out what skill set and athleticism we have in the group and how we can utilise it in a system I have got in my head.
“If you just copy and paste you might end up putting certain players in a box when they have a specific skill set and now you put them in a box and they can’t utilise that skill set in a game, so one must be very careful of (not) just going, ‘This is how we are going to do things’.
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“Where it will probably be frustrating for the fans, for the players and for us (as coaches) is evolution comes with sometimes success and sometimes with failure and that’s how you evolve and that’s how you learn what the group will be able to do.
“I read it actually on the wall within this environment. Somebody made a statement that said, ‘Evolution comes sometimes with failure’ and that is where we are currently. We failed in two instances last weekend from a defensive point of view and those failures were probably up to me.
“The first and the last try was definitely due to them [the Leinster players] trying to adapt to a new system and a new way of doing things and it will take them some time to get used to it and it will take me time to get used to them. So no, it won’t be a case of copy and paste. You will have to evolve with the team.”
Whether or not it is copy and paste, a new defensive system takes many games to mature.
This weekend’s game against the champs will be a good one!