Although by mid-2011 I was dealing with the uneasiness created by the shareholders’ deteriorating relationship, the successful ending to the Super Rugby season gave me confidence that we could also have a positive Currie Cup campaign. We used the style of rugby we had played in our strong finish to the SANZAR competition as a template for the domestic season.
I felt that silverware was a distinct possibility, particularly as some of the other teams would be losing more players than we would to the World Cup, which was to be played in New Zealand and coincided with the second half of the Currie Cup.
I have always believed strongly in the powers of visualisation, so, at the start of the campaign, I had a photo taken of us standing on a podium as a team simulating a finals victory, with water as champagne. We used a trophy secured from the ragged and bare cupboards of the Lions and a shabby old media backdrop. It was important to have a new vision as we moved on from Super Rugby – something to aim for and something to aspire to.
It didn’t start with a flourish. We struggled to win our first match, against the Pumas at Ellis Park (31-27). We played like a typical team starting off on a new campaign. There were no trials like there had been the year before. Instead, we used the gap between Super Rugby and the Currie Cup as a conditioning window more than anything else because, unlike in 2010, the structures were already in place.
Our next game was against Griquas, away. Kimberley can be a tough venue to visit and the Lions hadn’t always performed well there in previous years, so when we won 49-11, we considered it an excellent win. It was a performance that bolstered our self-belief.
Then we beat the Bulls 36-27 at Loftus and the Cheetahs 17-10 at Ellis Park. But just as we were starting to get cocky, the wake-up call came in the form of a narrow defeat to Western Province in Cape Town (26-28). We had a chance to win it late in the game but Elton Jantjies missed a penalty kick on the hooter, which I had felt was going to be just out of his range.
We kicked ourselves for losing that match. We felt we blew it, as we’d had it under control at one stage. And Marius Jonker didn’t help with his inconsistent refereeing at the breakdown. But we got over the defeat quickly, as it hadn’t been a question of lack of effort. It was more just a case of lack of execution in a couple of performance areas.
Next we faced the Sharks at home in what turned out to be a hard, tough game. Admittedly, by that stage they were without their Test players, who were at the Rugby World Cup, but any win against the Sharks has to be considered good (28-19).
We had done well enough to top the log after round one, so we went into the second half of the competition feeling that we were on track to achieve our objective. Winning the Currie Cup had become a big theme for the team, so we’d had T-shirts printed with the numbers 9912. The Lions had last won the Currie Cup in 1999, and that had been 12 years before.
Every now and then, little things would trip us up at the Lions. It seemed that there was always a struggle with our protocols. Players were forever arriving late for training or meetings, blaming the size of the city or traffic jams. I had never experienced the likes before.
As there was no history of recent team success at the Lions, the culture was orientated towards chasing individual success and individual goals. So, whenever we did get on a roll by winning a couple of games in succession, I had to keep the players on the level. I had to make them realise that they weren’t anything special, that we hadn’t won anything as a team yet, and neither had we been particularly extraordinary at any point in time.
The captaincy issue was resolved by the middle of the season. Doppies la Grange had started out as captain but then got injured and was ruled out for seven weeks, and Josh Strauss took over. When Doppies returned, I made it known to him that we were going to continue with Josh, and told him that the side had grown enormously during the five or six games while he had been away.
Doppies really struggled with that. He wanted the school badge of being captain but, to me, the school badge means nothing, as it all comes down to what is best for the group. It was a hell of a nice gesture on Josh’s part when he lifted the cup together with Doppies when the moment eventually came.
Early in the season we had also had the fiasco over scrumhalf Jano Vermaak’s move to the Bulls. Jano had an out-clause in his contract that would release him from the Lions if they didn’t finish in a certain position in Super Rugby, and he was looking for greener pastures after years of good service to the union.
I’d heard Jano was going to the Bulls, so I pulled him aside and spoke to him. He told me that if he did leave, it would only be after the Currie Cup, but his signing with the Bulls became more and more of a talking point in the media and a preoccupation within the team.
So I phoned his agent, James Adams, and said, ‘Just give me a blue or a red.’ In other words, Lions or Bulls, as I wanted to know what was going on. We had an excellent young player in Michael Bondesio waiting in the wings, and I wanted to use him more if Vermaak wasn’t intending to stay. That’s why I needed James to tell me what was happening with Vermaak.
In the end, on the Thursday morning before the game against the Bulls, I had to ask Jano if he was a blue or a red. He was upfront and told me that he would be a blue after 1 p.m. I played him in the reserves for the game, and I couldn’t have been any clearer in my communication. I thought maybe the unions might have been able to negotiate with each other and we could have released Jano early, as he was already committed elsewhere. This sort of confusion did not help the team.
Bondesio ended up having a cracker of a game against the Bulls. He was a different type of halfback from Jano, an aggressive player and a good runner of the advantage line. But it had been great to have both of them on our books for a while. After Jano’s departure we had to go for Rudy Paige as back-up scrumhalf. Rudy is very light and was not very effective in the tackle, and my concern was that we couldn’t afford to have Bondesio getting an injury. Eventually he did go out with a calf injury, but fortunately only for a couple of weeks.
If I look back on the one-on-ones I had with the Lions players, I realise that perhaps I overestimated their ability to deal emotionally with strong feedback, and maybe I should have addressed the group as a collective more often and focused less on individual feedback. That way, nothing would have been lost in translation, and the individual would still have been able to pick up what was needed from the communication.
Ever since I was with the All Blacks, I had kept a log of everything. It is important to keep records of what is said and done, and it ended up helping me a great deal when I sailed into troubled waters with the Lions later on.
I think I did tend to micromanage and, if I was to have my time over again, I would handle things differently. There are more effective ways to communicate. Nevertheless, feedback is essential. People have to have feedback and, as far as I’m concerned, not giving it is totally disrespectful. But, as players, there are times you just have to put your big panties on. You can’t always expect feedback to be favourable.
Our momentum in the drive to top the log was halted a bit when we experienced a hiccup against the Bulls at home, losing 18-21. I had brought Michael Rhodes back for that game, and his ill-discipline when he was yellow-carded hurt us. I pulled him aside later when we had a Lions evening for fathers and sons at the Ellis Park auditorium and told him in no uncertain terms to pull himself together, as we couldn’t keep tolerating cards and penalties – they were costing us. Although I was forceful, I was not over the top, but that moment was to revisit me the following year.
After speaking with Rhodes, he became a changed man. After that, his selection was never in question. He changed his attitude, as I had asked him to, and he played bloody good football.
I think we got overemotional against the Bulls and didn’t channel it into our structures. It was to prove a good learning curve for the group. Some guys were going through adverse times – a couple of the loose forwards had had bereavements in their families, which can be hard to deal with in a team situation, so I tried to get them to express their emotions.
As the end-of-the-league phase of the season neared, we played the Cheetahs away. We were looking tired by that stage and we were well out of the game before managing to come back and grab a 25-all draw. Our comeback in that game ensured that we would finish top of the log, which meant the first part of our mission had been accomplished: we would host a semi-final and, possibly, a final.
Before the return Griquas game, we received a communication from the SARU referees department relating to the issue of offloading at the ruck. According to the rule book, the players had to stay on their feet going into a ruck but, as we had been the best team in the competition at retaining the ball, I didn’t focus too much on the interpretation during the build-up to the Griquas match.
Unfortunately, though, Mark Lawrence was refereeing us that day, and he tends to be a bit of a coach in pre-match meetings. Sure enough, that was what he did, and his interpretation just confused the players. We won 41-25, but we played poorly. Afterwards Mark came to me and said I should be happy. I gave him an honest response. I said, ‘Mark, this game is not all about you.’ He could sense my irritation. I asked him: ‘How come we are the best team in the competition at looking after the ball and, suddenly, today we had all this hesitancy? I don’t want you coaching my players before the game.’
It was a gamble for me to confront Lawrence, as I suspected he might ref the final. You always worry that a bit of criticism directed at a referee might backfire on you. But I think because of that exchange I cleared up quite a bit with Mark and he respected me for it. He did referee the final, but my criticism definitely didn’t have any negative effect.
Jonathan Kaplan could sometimes be quite moody and, once, when I was with the Western Force, he came into the change room before a match against the Blues and he might as well have said, ‘I hate Matt Henjak.’ He was in a foul mood, and in my post-match review I let him have it. I said his attitude when he came into the change room had been shit.
I also told him that I would like to share my concerns with him, which I did. Ever since that day we’ve got on really well and there has been mutual respect. He even started asking for my input in my capacity as a former international coach on how some of the international teams were developing.
The Lions went to Durban for the final log game with the top spot already wrapped up. I was in a dilemma, as I wasn’t sure whether we were good enough to take players out of the team without losing momentum. In the end, I opted to play the reserves, and we got hammered 53-9. That precipitated much scepticism about our chances of winning the Currie Cup. The media were saying that the Currie Cup challenge was over for the Lions. So it was good medicine: we were being written off – no one was giving us a chance.
I quickly brought closure to that losing match at Kings Park while we were still in the change room. I congratulated the players on topping the log, but said that obviously our goal was not to lose like we just had. We also hadn’t reckoned on losing J.C. van Rensburg to a hamstring injury. I said that we should go and have a drink to celebrate being top of the log, and that we had more exciting things to focus on the following week in the form of a semi-final against Western Province.
We refocused immediately. Although unlucky to have lost J.C., who had been outstanding, we got C.J. van der Linde and Butch James back from the Springboks, as the national players were being reabsorbed back into the Currie Cup teams after the Boks were knocked out of the World Cup. The Sharks and Western Province, who between them had the bulk of the Bok players, were suddenly the favourites to win the competition. But I felt that not having to change the team too much might benefit us. I was proved correct.
I sat both C.J. and Butch down and explained to them that they would have to play off the bench. I was eager to preserve the advantage of not having to make wholesale changes. By contrast, Western Province brought most of their big-name players back in, which meant substantial changes to their starting teams.
We just had to change a few minor things, such as aspects of our exit kicking game. And I placed a strong emphasis on winning the collisions – something that was illustrated on the day when Wikus van Heerden collided with Schalk Burger. Both players got up very gingerly afterwards.
Province, who now had some key Boks in their backline, threw everything at us and we had to defend with all our might. In fact, for the build-up to a final, the semi-final provided the perfect balance of attack, kicking and defence. We had to really work hard and earn our 29-20 win, which is always good preparation for a competition decider.
We were buoyed by the massive interest shown us in Johannesburg going into the week of the final. During the latter stages of the season, the fans had started coming back to Ellis Park, but the week of the final took crowd attendance to a whole new level.
I decided to let the fans be part of the experience and watch the training session on the Wednesday. I thought this would create an emotional connection and get a buzz going. Having such support in the stadium in the final would have a huge influence on the game, especially if we started off well and managed to retain our momentum. It proved the right thing to do. It impressed upon the players how passionate the union’s long-suffering supporters were and made them realise what a Currie Cup win would mean to their many fans.
We had people coming up to us and saying that they were tired of having to turn their television upside down to watch the rugby, as the Lions were always at the bottom of the log, and that we must go out and do it for them. We were also told how people had mates coming to join them for the final from far-flung places. It made the team realise how many people were relying on them.
In the week of the final, we focused a lot on the players’ attitude. I must take my hat off to Wayne Taylor and the rest of the staff. I was the head chef, and they played their part in letting me know whether I was overcooking or undercooking the players. Wayne had the insight to tell me that the players’ attitude wasn’t great, that maybe they had become overconfident.
I was also concerned that they might feel that just by making the final, they had achieved their objective – that they saw it as an accomplishment in itself that they were involved in the deciding day of the season. It was understandable – after all, the Lions hadn’t played in a final for a while. So, while addressing the players at the first team meeting, I told them that if there were any guys in the group who thought that we have already arrived at our end goal, could they please leave the room now. The plan had never been just to make the final – I was determined that we should win it.
I don’t really go for psychologists, so I didn’t bring one in in the build-up week. I tend to take care of the ‘mind stuff’ myself. Although I value the input of sports psychologists, I think a good coach understands his players and knows them best. When I had first arrived at the Lions, Henning Gericke, who had been involved with the Springboks in winning the World Cup in 2007, had been with the team, but I found his psychological approach unsustainable, as motivational stuff doesn’t last long and you have to be careful how you channel it.
One critical factor in our favour at that stage of the season was that, suddenly, we were devoid of the problems upstairs. The internecine strife in the administration was on hold. It was like a hiatus, and it came as a breath of fresh air. There were no bells or whistles or fanfare – just old-fashioned Transvaal footy and an emphasis on getting the job done.
I spoke to the team about the hardships we had endured. I explained that we would be under the pump at some stage of the final and would have to withstand the pressure. I reminded them that they had withstood much adversity during the year both as a team and as individuals, as well as the previous week against Western Province. They had also bounced back from that defeat in Cape Town halfway through the competition. ‘You must endure the onslaught when it comes and stick together,’ I said. ‘We have prepared for it.’
As it turned out, Van der Linde would get yellow-carded before half-time and we did indeed have to hang in. I thought we won the game then, on the defensive effort we produced, as the Sharks were really coming at us. In withstanding that onslaught, we gained a lot of confidence and rattled the opposition. Even when the Sharks were awarded a rather dubious try, we managed to strike straight back at them.
In my team talk before the game, I stressed how important it was for the players to trust one another. ‘You’ve got to trust the guy next to you and you will be fine. You will prove to yourselves that you are capable of being extraordinary.’
The bus got held up on the way to Ellis Park for some time. Cars were over-parked and we were delayed for 20 minutes. It was hilarious when Lions and Sharks fans joined in to help move the cars so that we could get through. But the chaos didn’t faze anyone. The guys were very calm, and it filled me with confidence that we would get the result.
And, from the opening minutes, it was clear that my confidence was justified, as the team started off with enormous passion. Most of our strategy centred around getting up and hitting the forward runners off the No. 9. We were clinical, too, and by attacking the Sharks at the breakdown, we forced penalties. Elton Jantjies kicked one to give us a 3-0 lead after just two minutes, and then Jaco Taute produced one of the most monstrous kicks ever seen at Ellis Park to stretch that lead.
The Sharks battled to contain us. We were on fire. After 26 minutes, we were 19-3 ahead and the crowd was buzzing. Then came a slight lull when Van der Linde was carded and we had to defend as if our lives depended on it. Despite the Sharks throwing everything at us, we kept them scoreless through that period and were well ahead at half-time.
But the Sharks fought back in the early part of the second half, and then Willem Alberts scored a try, which should never have been allowed because the assistant referee had missed a blatant knock-on. We stopped playing after Alberts dropped the goal and referee Mark Lawrence must have sensed something was wrong, as he approached the assistant referee, who seemed oblivious to the knock. SARU had made a decision before the game not to go with their best refereeing officials and that moment could have come back to haunt them, as the Sharks were suddenly back in the game, with the score at 22-16 with 29 minutes to go.
It was then that the team ethos that had prevailed all season started to shine through, and after that the Sharks were completely shut out of the game. The final score, 42-16, was the biggest winning margin in a Currie Cup final since Northern Transvaal beat Western Province 39-9 at Newlands in 1980. It was also the first Lions trophy since 1999 and their first win in a Johannesburg Currie Cup final in 61 years.
The scenes afterwards were unbelievable – there was a massive crowd celebrating like there was no tomorrow. I will never forget that Currie Cup, and it will go down as one of my best coaching achievements in terms of the circumstances and the talent that was available.
Others hadn’t managed to do that, even with much more talented teams, and I am not sure the Lions will ever enjoy long-term success again unless they become more high-performance-orientated.
What did it all mean to me? Well, I was going through a divorce at the time. I had made the decision to get divorced earlier in the year and, although I managed to park it up, I was still going through it. People who have been through a divorce will know what I mean when I say that.
As a player I had won a National Provincial Championship title and a Ranfurly Shield in New Zealand, and I had also coached a team to a semi-final in the NPC, so I had tasted success before. But that Currie Cup was something special to me. To explain what I mean by that, I have to go back to when I arrived in Johannesburg in 2010, and how I scratched my head at the first training session as I realised – noting how overweight and out of condition some of the players were – that I had taken over a team of doughnuts, and thought to myself, ‘Jeez, there is a lot of work to be done here.’
But, at the same time, I always saw the potential. It is such an awesome feeling to see the group grow as a collective unit, to win a trophy and to reach that level of confidence.
When I was at the Western Force, we were applauded before we had even won a game on the basis that we were just starting out and had built a franchise from scratch, but to witness the applause as the players lifted the Currie Cup on the podium was an emotional experience for me.
As I said earlier, some of the players had suffered personal losses during that season. Derick Minnie had lost his dad and one of Cobus Grobbelaar’s family had lost a child. We had gone with Minnie to his dad’s funeral, with the team all dressed in their No. 1s. Seeing him now walk around the field with his sister after the game made me think of that time. Wikus van Heerden was with his father and his two sons enjoying the moment at Ellis Park; assistant coach Johan Ackermann was there with his family, and the whole circle deserved to be applauded for a job well done.
I’d had to put out of my mind the fact that we’d played the final against the team coached by one of my best mates, John Plumtree, so there were a lot of personal distractions too. And then, although there had been a pause in the administration’s wrangling, I was still very aware of what was bubbling in the upper corridors of the Lions. Even then, in that moment of great joy, although I wished it to be otherwise, I knew that the success we had achieved might not necessarily be sustainable.
But it was both humbling and embarrassing to walk around that ground with the team and have your name called out by that huge crowd. That was an unforgettable moment in my life.
Naturally, there was a big party after the final. We went to Fourways and stayed overnight at Montecasino and some quite odd speeches were made. I was feeling tired, as I had run 17 kilometres earlier that day from Melrose Arch. I had been spotted while running and it was mentioned on the radio that the Lions coach was seen running the streets of Joburg on the morning of the final. I always ran or trained on the day of a game: it helped make me feel fresh.
We attended an autograph session early that Sunday at Montecasino, which was another way of paying back the fans for their support. And there was an Oktoberfest going on inside the complex, which added to the good atmosphere. I remember sitting there drinking big pints. It was supposed to be a few quiet drinks, but inevitably they turned into a lot of loud ones.
I then ended up in Rosebank with a bodyguard in the form of Pierre Dormehl. I really enjoyed that day, and the players did too. I bumped into a few of them. ‘Hey, Coach, you’re such a tough coach,’ the players would say to me. One of the key things is that if my personality were different I might have been softer in my approach, but those players were never the finished article. This game evolves continually and nothing is ever finite. Even while sitting there that Sunday enjoying myself, I was acutely aware that the Currie Cup is one thing and Super Rugby is another thing entirely. Super Rugby is the big competition these days, and the Currie Cup is supposed to be just a stepping stone towards that.
I suspected the admin guys knew we weren’t going to be in Super Rugby in 2013 with the Southern Kings hovering on the periphery, and I felt that if we were going to change that, we would have to play out of our skins the following season. So I was already thinking about how I could go about strengthening the squad for 2012.
The Monday after the final, every single player and staff member came down to a team meeting wearing the 9912 T-shirts. It was a great symbol. We had the Currie Cup in the room and there was a sense of having accomplished our mission.
The following week, after the partying was all over, it was time for the end-of-season exit testing. I would later find out that the players were not happy about this. We put them through a tough three-kilometre run and a strength challenge. The idea was to establish a fitness benchmark so that we could measure where we had been at the end of the season against our condition the next year.
I make no apologies for the testing – it is part of the responsibility of being a professional. Yes, you have your party after you have achieved your goal, but you still have a responsibility to fulfil whatever obligations you may have and to ready the team for the next challenge by optimising its preparation.
To me, it doesn’t matter how hungover you are, exit testing is just something you have to do, and you need to do it as soon as practically possible after the last game. If you don’t do it then, when else are you going to do it? This approach is all about maintaining high standards. The management had a well-planned and coordinated approach to the immediate post-final period. We were trying to teach the players what it took to be a professional. There were young players in the squad and therefore a lack of awareness of what was required to become a better athlete. I spoke about this in the one-on-ones we conducted at the same time.
After a while, I realised that most of the guys who were whinging came from another environment. ‘We don’t do that at the Sharks,’ would often be the response to an instruction. My reply would always be, ‘Well, we’re not the Sharks.’
It’s fascinating how everyone wants to be the same and wants to stay in their comfort zone. I just don’t get that. I do take note, but I don’t give a shit what other people are doing. Did former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson drop his standards at the end of a season or when the players felt like he should? I doubt it. The bottom line for me is that when you exit your environment at the end of a season, you have to know what your starting point is going to be next time.
At the end of that season, I asked the leadership group and the skipper, Josh Strauss, for feedback on how I had performed and to give me some pointers on where I could improve. I asked them to bring any other outstanding matters to me in a formal forum, and they could do it in writing if they liked. The purpose was to bring closure to the campaign.
Eventually, Josh came to me at the eleventh hour and briefed me verbally, so I had to jot down what he said. Later on, when I was facing allegations against me, I was able to point out in my defence that the players had been given plenty of opportunity for feedback. What emerged later was not revealed when it should have been. Or was it that stuff was dreamt up later to simply marginalise me because the union could no longer afford my services?
But that was all still to come. For the moment, there was time to enjoy the success. Although I wasn’t called in front of the board after our Currie Cup victory, I did sense some envy. Statements were made to the effect that the campaign wasn’t ‘just about John Mitchell’. There appeared to be some resentment towards me and I couldn’t understand why.
Outside of the Lions organisation, people like former Lions Springbok Kobus Wiese, who is now a television pundit, were pushing for me big time, and several critics were asking why I wasn’t being considered for the Springbok job. I also won the Coach of the Year Award at the annual SARU end-of-year function – but perhaps that is a poisoned chalice, as John Plumtree also won it the year before he lost his job.
Once the divorce happened between Gumede and the board, there was a big issue about money and the bridging of finances. After the Currie Cup win I had a meeting with two guys, a businessman and a former Transvaal Springbok, who made it clear that they wanted De Klerk and his affiliates out, and they were just waiting for the Lions’ share price to drop to R1.
There is such wealth in Johannesburg, but the Lions are seen there as a ‘south-of-Joburg’ club, which was the terminology often used to describe De Klerk and the other administrators. I often hear about how there is such division in the administration of rugby in the Western Cape, but I am not sure how different it can be from the situation in Gauteng.
I think the problem I encountered there can be summed up by a quote attributed to Alex Ferguson: ‘Too many people try to get a team to win rather than get a club to win. You get marginalised if you just concentrate on the football as the head coach.’
I had had the same problem at the All Blacks. At the Western Force, I had no CEO and a fraudulent sponsor to deal with. At the Lions, there was divisiveness at the top. The following year, standards dropped when it started to become apparent that, no matter what we did, there would be no Super Rugby for us the year after.
But this is where my competitiveness comes out: Do I just want to be a nice coach who hangs on for the wages, one of those coaches who never wins anything and is there just to be in the game, or do I want to have a crack at it and try to win something?
I choose to try to win. I see no point in it otherwise.