Analysing New Signing Kitschoff’s Recent Outing on Irish Soil

Written By Peter Lockhart

Even before Wednesday’s announcement of the signing of Steven Kitshoff, Ulster fans would have watched his outing against Ireland on Saturday closely. As the province alluded to with one of the best all-time signing announcement videos, Kitshoff’s impending arrival in Belfast has been the worst kept secret in rugby, with news first breaking back in June. 

Ireland’s win over the Springboks was the first time Kitshoff played on Irish soil since inklings were had that he would be joining Ulster after next year’s World Cup. 

Dan McFarland won’t be asking for his money back any time soon, but Kitshoff’s outing in the Springboks’ defeat was average at best. He wasn’t poor, but he wasn’t shooting the lights out either. 

Such a rating is likely down to the high standards he and South Africa have set in recent years more than anything, but Kitshoff was part of a pack that simply failed to deliver the maul, scrum and collision dominance on which the Nienaber/Erasmus game plan so heavily depends. 

Kitshoff’s night started as it meant to go on: clumsily. 

With less than two minutes on the clock, he gets caught on the wrong side of the ruck after Garry Ringrose gathered a half-blocked Conor Murray box-kick inside the South Africa 22. It’s one of those penalties you see every week; a player just gets trapped in a position where he is blocking the ball at the ruck, there isn’t anything he can do to get out of the way but the referee has no choice but to ping him for not rolling away. 

Bang. ‘1 green’ is singled out by Georgian ref Nika Amashukeli and Johnny Sexton opens the scoring. Tone well and truly set, just not in the way South Africa would have wanted. 

It was one of three penalties Kitshoff conceded on the night, the other two coming at the scrum when matched up with Finlay Bealham in the second half. Bealham had arguably his best showing in an Ireland shirt, and many scrum experts have since said the decisions could have gone either way but if you had said at the beginning of the night to Kitshoff he would earn scrum parity with Tadhg Furlong and then concede decisions to Bealham, I’m sure he would have been disappointed. 

Kitshoff certainly felt perplexed by some of the decision making against him. In the build-up to a scrum not long after his second penalty concession, he can be seen having a lengthy - but friendly - conversation with Amashukeli, presumably voicing his concerns. 

Across the whole front row, South Africa failed to get their usual edge at scrum time. There was one first half set-piece where Kitshoff nearly spun Furlong into giving away a penalty, but apart from that free-kicks for early Irish shoves were as good as South Africa were getting. 

Ill-discipline aside, Kitshoff’s work-rate was good. He was found himself a part of forward parts across the park and hit his share of attacking rucks. 

However, his most noteworthy intervention in defence - or lack thereof - came during the build-up to Mack Hansen’s try that saw Ireland out to a 10-point lead. 

We’ve all seen the video by now of Dan Sheehan kicking the ball out of the ruck (and Siya Kolisi’s neck roll) that allowed Ireland to win back possession. Gibson-Park takes the ball, spots a mismatch with Kitshoff in front of him in the defensive line, duly runs around him to draw in further defenders before spinning the ball through the hands to the space out wide. 

There probably isn’t a whole lot Kitshoff could have done differently in this situation. He isn’t helped by being in a defensive position wide from the ruck, where he normally wouldn’t be since South Africa’s defence is out of kilter due to the fast transition. 

Kitshoff also isn’t helped by the defenders either side of him. South Africa employ shooters all the time to rush out of the line and shut down the attack, but both Jasper Wiese (8) and Damian de Allende (12) fly up at different stages without Kitshoff coming with them. The spacing between the three is all wrong, you can see Kitshoff step one way and then the other, not sure which attacker to go for because he is in too much defensive space on his own. 

As a loosehead in the 50th minute, Kitshoff is probably too fatigued to be making such runs out of the line at the same speed as those either side, but the result is a disconnected line that contains gaps. 

A subtle, if unintentional block from Peter O’Mahony slows Kitshoff down, but he was never catching up to Gibson-Park in that instance. 

It was a bad 15 minutes or so for Kitshoff not long after the half-time, with the two scrum penalties coming either side of the Hansen try. 

Ultimately, the loosehead was replaced by Ox Nche in the 57th minute. Nche’s first involvement? A scrum penalty won against Bealham that straight away suggested he would have a more positive impact on the game than the man he replaced. 

Kitshoff remains a World class loosehead and he will add plenty to what is a position of need for UIster, but Saturday night is a performance he would rather forget. 

Call it rotation, call it the ‘Boks mixing up their Bomb Squad, but Kitshoff is not starting against France this weekend. Instead, it is Nche who had such a positive impact against Ireland that gets the nod. 

Nathan Johns

Peter Lockhart
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