Whether Mike Catt’s time coaching England is temporary or longer term, there can be little doubting the value that he brings for a tour to South Africa. As well as being born and raised in Port Elizabeth, Catt played in one of only three England teams to have beaten the Springboks on their own hard grounds, in front of their own fiercely partisan supporters.
Many of the players in an inexperienced touring squad have never played in South Africa, while Stuart Lancaster, the head coach, will also be new to the experience.
In recent weeks, before travelling to South Africa, Lancaster has been sampling the country’s rugby culture by reading the autobiographies of players such as Victor Matfield, John Smit and Butch James, and of Jake White, who coached those players in the World Cup-winning team of 2007. And there are no warm-up games for England to ease their way into the tour before the first international in Durban on Saturday.
So does Catt, the new backs coach, feel he can accurately convey the intensity of the experience that awaits over the next three weeks? “No, I don’t think you can,” he said. “They have to feel it for themselves. This tour is about who can and who can’t take what is coming.”
In a way, these words tell the players all they need to know about the challenge they face in South Africa. They may be an emerging team at an early stage of their development, but if they turn up for the third international in Port Elizabeth having been thumped in Durban and Johannesburg, they are unlikely to find the South African public cheering sympathetically for the underdog.
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“In general, South Africa is a very welcoming place, but a very hostile environment when you get into rugby circles,” Catt said. “So there’s nothing better than beating them.”
Among the highlights of his own career, during which he won 75 caps for England, Catt, 40, described the 27-22 victory in Bloemfontein in 2000 as second only to the World Cup win in Australia three years later.
The win in Bloemfontein was only the third by an England team in South Africa, after the victories in Johannesburg in 1972 and Pretoria in 1994. It started something, too, as England did not lose in their next six meetings with the Springboks, a sequence that has now been comprehensively reversed, with South Africa winning the past seven contests.
“Winning in Bloemfontein was a massive stepping stone towards winning the World Cup in 2003,” Catt said. “We need to do that now in terms of building to the 2015 World Cup.”
On trips back to his native country as a player, Catt was inevitably singled out for special attention from home supporters. Much of it offered him gentle reminders of the time he was trampled by Jonah Lomu in the World Cup semi-final against New Zealand in Cape Town in 1995. So Catt knows exactly what lies in store for Mouritz Botha and Brad Barritt, England’s latest expatriate South Africans.
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“I understand Afrikaans and English, so I knew everything they were saying when I played,” Catt says, with a grin. “Those guys will get some abuse, but it’s part of the job they’ve got to do.”
For all the value that Catt will add to this tour, it is worth remembering that his post is temporary and that he was Lancaster’s third choice for the role, only appointed once Andy Farrell and Wayne Smith had turned the job down.
The news that Farrell was leaving Saracens on Friday, possibly to rejoin Lancaster’s coaching panel, might have cast doubt over Catt’s long-term job prospects, but if he impresses the head coach over the next few weeks, he could conceivably work alongside Farrell. The extended job interview starts in earnest this week.
Where they play
Tomorrow Australia v Scotland (Newcastle, 10.30am).
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Saturday New Zealand v Ireland (Auckland, 8.35am); Australia v Wales (Brisbane, 11am); South Africa v England (Durban, 4pm).