OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday 6.30pm.
ANDR Markgraaff, the coach who sacked South Africa’s 1995 World Cup-winning captain Francois Pienaar, on Sunday hit back at claims by the player that the axing was the result of a personal vendetta.
“He was left out of the Springbok squad because he was simply not good enough anymore,” said Markgraaff, who shocked the rugby world when he sacked Pienaar just 15 months after he led the Springboks to their historic World Cup victory.
Pienaar, now player and rugby director at English club Saracens, claims in his autobiography “Rainbow Warrior”, that Markgraaff had axed him as a result of a power struggle.
Markgraaff, in an interview with Afrikaans-language newspaper Rapport, strongly denied this and said the decision had not been easy.
“I, and the country’s leading rugby authorities, were agreed that (Pienaar) could no longer, on the strength of his play, earn a place in the team,” he said.
“At that stage he could scarcely complete a match. He was continually injured.”
Markgraaff, who resigned as Springbok coach in 1997 after a secret tape recording in which he made racist comments was leaked to the media, added that at the time he was trying to build a squad for the 1999 World Cup “and Francois was not part of my plans”.
In his book, released in London this week, Pienaar, 32, said he was convinced Markgraaff believed he was faking his injuries.
Confronting the coach after being stretchered off the field during a Tri-Nations encounter against New Zealand in Cape Town, he said to Markgraaff: “I understand that you think I faked my injury at Newlands. You were saying my injury was not as I had made it look. Is that true?”
Markgraaff denied the charge. “I looked him in the eye,” Pienaar
writes. “I sensed that he was lying through his teeth. I could see it in his face … That would be the last time I ever spoke to Andre Markgraaff.”
Markgraaff, in the interview with Rapport, said Pienaar had contributed to his own demise by holding discussions on behalf of other players with Australian magnate Kerry Packer, who wanted to set up a professional rugby league comprising the cream of southern hemisphere players.
The idea was dropped after the South African Rugby Football Union
(Sarfu) agreed to put top South African players on professional contracts if they stayed in South Africa.
Many players in the Springbok team turned against Pienaar, Markgraaff claimed.
“They were cross with him for the role he played in the Packer negotiations and the money he made out of it.”
The former coach confirmed assertions by Pienaar in his book that
former Sarfu president Louis Luyt had nothing to do with the axing, contrary to reports at the time which blamed Luyt for the decision.
Pienaar said he believed the axing was Markgraaff’s decision alone but that “equally there is no doubt in my mind that Louis Luyt was not at all distressed by my leaving.”
Markgraaff said, however, that Luyt had been shocked when he was
informed of the coach’s intentions.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Luyt had asked the coach. “This is not
a bomb but an atom bomb.”
Pienaar writes that he is still upset about his sacking.
“I feel the pain each time I watch South Africa play … With all due modesty, I believe I did deserve better than to depart the stage on a stretcher.” — AFP