DAVID SHAPSHAK, Johannesburg | Wednesday 11.00am.
SPRINGBOK captain Joost van der Westhuizen on Wednesday said he will miss six months of rugby after injuring his right knee again in the team’s World Cup semi-final defeat against Australia.
The mercurial scrumhalf, who will undergo surgery on Wednesday morning, says he played ”a game and half with a torn tendon” after injuring himself sometime in the 27-21 semi-final defeat by Australia two weeks ago.
”After the Australia game I was in pain. After New Zealand (the third place play-off last Thursday), I couldn’t walk,” a visibly limping Van der Westhuizen told a business breakfast in Johannesburg on Wednesday morning.
Van der Westhuizen, South Africa’s highest try scorer with 29 Test tries, took over the Springbok captaincy shortly before the World Cup and was an inspirational leader.
He called for the rules around the controversial tackle ball to be changed, because it was impractical. ”They must do something around the tackle ball. The tackled player has a second to let go while the tackler has to roll away.”
He said only one southern hemisphere ref blew a game – the play-off against New Zealand – and ”that was the lowest penalty count”.
Van der Westhuizen, who only returned to playing rugby in June, said he sympathised with Bobby Skinstad, the talented loose forward who replaced axed skipper Gary Teichmann at eighthman.
Skinstad did not play as the dynamic game-breaker he was in last year’s Tri-Nations victories, while many thought his inclusion at Teichmann’s expense soured the Boks chances of retaining the William Webb Ellis trophy.
”He had a serious knee injury. Bobby had to overcome his injury. He might have got back too soon to provincial rugby. It took me for or five months to get back.
”He did what was expected of him. He served me well, he passed well. But just because he didn’t play his own game, he wasn’t a disappointment.”
Van der Westhuizen, SA’s second most capped player with 57 tests, believes South Africa took the best side to the World Cup, despite harsh criticism about coach Nick Mallet’s selection of players.
Reuters reports that it is the third successive year that Van der Westhuizen has ended a trip to the nothern hemisphere with a long-term injury.
He missed the majority of the 1998 and 1999 Super 12 seasons following groin and knee injuries sustained against France and England respectively. He is not expected to be fit for the 2000 Super 12 campaign until late April.