Rugby Union: Springboks in an adventurous mood: Entertaining play in prospect - Steve Bale sees tourists opening for business yesterday by tackling the controversial issues

IN A strategy as daring as they assure us they want their rugby to be, the South Africans yesterday began their tour of Wales and Scotland by confronting all the issues that have been making them a source of endless controversy.

No sooner had the Springboks arrived in Cardiff than, without waiting to be asked, their manager was acknowledging past faults in relation to drugs and foul play and asking the International Board to make a quantum leap by permitting full compensation for players' loss of earnings.

If Jannie Engelbrecht imagines that these dirty words will now remain unspoken until his squad go home in December, he is either naive or misguided. But it was a neat idea to set off the debate on his own terms.

Of the rugby the Springboks wish to play in their 13 matches, which start against Cardiff on Saturday, there was scarcely a mention. Instead, Engelbrecht pointed out that Balie Swart, Drikus Hattingh and Elandre van der Bergh had all done their time after being tested positive for drugs and should be allowed their rehabilitation.

In any case, South Africa's drug-testing procedures were now as rigorous as the rest of the rugby world and since the country had been readmitted to the fold there had not been a single positive test. Indeed, all 30 of the present tour party had recently tested negative.

Van der Bergh, however, is a doubly touchy subject, since he was the Eastern Province forward whose footwork opened up Jonathan Callard's face during England's summer tour. Hattingh is another, since he spent much of the South African season suspended after a kicking incident. Then there was Johan le Roux, sent home from New Zealand and suspended for 18 months after biting Sean Fitzpatrick, and James Small, expelled from this tour party after a nightclub incident.

This is not how South Africa wishes to be viewed: hence Engelbrecht's attempt yesterday to pre-empt the issue. 'We have been isolated for so long, out of contact with international rugby, and tended to do things our own way. Some of the time it wasn't the correct way,' he confessed. On drugs, he said: 'I would like to invite our hosts to come and test our players any time they like.' On foul play: 'We are going to be very, very strict with our team and they all know it.'

This is all very well, but cynicism does not need to be carried to excess to imagine conflagrations at various points in Wales and the Welsh may be sure that, even if the Springboks do not start it, they will be perfectly willing to finish it.

Still, they would prefer to be remembered for the quality of their rugby, and the open and adventurous way in which the South African game has been moving promises a hugely entertaining tour as long as tempers are checked and yesterday's appalling Welsh weather does not keep up.

It is only two years since Naas Botha's team were in England, but the difference now in personnel and playing style is so vast that we might just as well be talking about another country altogether.

Hard though it has been, and remains, detrimental provincial barriers are being dismantled. 'In South Africa we play each other week after week and you get to the point where you are stagnant,' Botha's personable captaincy successor, Francois Pienaar, said. 'The provincialism within the side is definitely fading away.'

Gone, too, is the reliance on the lumbering forward bludgeon which was a historic - and generally successful - Springbok characteristic but was proven calamitously inappropriate when South Africa re-emerged from the sporting boycott and lost to Australia, New Zealand, France and England in 1992.

This has been a metamorphosis. As anyone who saw the recent Currie Cup final between Transvaal and Orange Free State would gladly recognise, the emphasis at provincial as well as national level has switched entirely to running and passing.

Perhaps Saturday's match against Cardiff will be too soon for the Springboks to play this way with complete fluency, but even so the prospect is quite enthralling. Pienaar, captain and icon, will sit out the game and probably next Wednesday's against Wales A while a stitched eyebrow heals.

THREE PLAYERS TO WATCH FOR FRANCOIS PIENAAR The Springbok captain represents South African rugby's new look, as an articulate spokesman for his team and as a buccaneering open-side flanker unmissable with his flaxen hair. Yet Transvaal's unpopularity with the rest of the country is such that he has an army of domestic critics who question whether he is worth his place.

ULI SCHMIDT If Pienaar is the new look, Uli Schmidt reflects old, unreconstructed attitudes with his notorious view that South African blacks should stick to soccer and his withdrawal from the 1992 tour because he did not feel he would be welcome. At the same time he is a marvellous free-ranging, try-scoring hooker of irrepressible dynamism.

CHESTER WILLIAMS For all the millions the South Africans say they are investing, the big breakthrough for non- whites is yet to come. And, thank goodness, there is no tokenism in the selection of Chester Williams. Robert Jones, the Wales scrum-half, played alongside him for Western Province during our summer and assesses Williams as one of the best wings in the world.

Tour party, itinerary, team v Cardiff, Sporting Digest