Modern Springbok coaches fall into two camps: far-sighted progressives like Kitch Christie, Jake White and Rassie Erasmus – people who tend to deliver world titles, in other words – and backward-looking medievalists such as John Williams and Rudolf Straeuli, neither of whom won anything worth winning.
If some of the rugby played by the South Africans under Williams, in the early 1990s, and Straeuli, a decade later, bore hints of a great mind at work, it was a great mind of the 13th century.
But there is still a place in the game for ancient thought, and thinkers do not come much older tha...