Andre Vos was sacked in the time-honoured ham-fisted manner
Andy Capostagno
There is no easy way to change a Springbok captain. Naas Botha announced his retirement in front of astonished team-mates at a post-Test match function in London. Francois Pienaar was carried off the field on a stretcher at Newlands and never played for his country again.
Gary Teichmann was crassly moved aside to accommodate a youngster whose failure to recover from a knee injury forced him to limp through the 1999 Rugby World Cup on one leg. Teichmann was sacked over the phone, his successor, Joost van der Westhuizen, resigned before anyone had a chance to press the redial button.
Van der Westhuizen’s move was a clever one, because the history of the job suggests it is up and out. By jumping before he was pushed the scrum-half got to continue in his other, less prestigious role, without the need for the coach to invent some lame excuse about why his best player was suddenly not good enough for Test rugby.
In his role as the great mediator, Harry Viljoen has found a way to retain the services of Andre Vos and yet replace him as captain with Bob Skinstad. That in itself deserves a round of applause. So how come no one’s clapping?
It certainly has nothing to do with the merits or otherwise of Vos. He is a thoroughly decent man and a good rugby player who may be just short of what is required at Test level.
It shouldn’t have anything to do with the captaincy credentials of Skinstad, either. He was identified early as a leader of men and was outstanding as Stormers captain until the infamous knee injury of April 1999. So why is there a problem? As ever with South African rugby it comes down to how it was done, and not why.
Viljoen has an apparently limitless budget from the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) and a back-up team of 16 advisers, yet his idea of managing the handover was to invite Vos to explain to the few press people who had travelled early to Port Elizabeth exactly why it was a good idea to make Skinstad captain.
Never mind the fact that Skinstad is, despite all spin-doctoring to the contrary, a pale shadow of the player who lit up the Tri-Nations in 1998. Never mind that Vos’s performance in the (victorious) second Test against France earned him the man of the match award. Just eat humble pie in public Andre and tell everyone how wonderful it will be to work with Bob.
After that the actual announcement of the team would have been an anticlimax were it not for the late withdrawal through injury of Gaffie du Toit, a happenstance that necessitated the recall to the flyhalf berth of Percy Montgomery.
Monty is one of seven changes and two positional switches from the team that beat France 20-15. That follows on the five changes from the team that lost the first Test in Johannesburg.
It is at this point that we could drag out the quote: “This series gives me a chance to look at a group of players and it was always my intention to try and give all 26 a run in the two Tests against France and one-off against Italy.” But we used that quote last week and, anyway, that was before the captain was sacked.
So what is going on here? Viljoen and his advisers spend two weeks in Plettenberg Bay honing their plans and two Test matches later they end up with a team that is barely on nodding terms with the first selection.
Thinus Delport, who was one of the better players in Durban, is rewarded by being moved from fullback to left wing. Conrad Jantjes, who was deemed not experienced enough to replace Monty at Ellis Park, becomes the third fullback in three games and the original incumbent goes to flyhalf.
Andre Venter, whose international future was apparently as a lock, returns from injury to the side of the scrum and Skinstad makes the oh so simple transition from impact (?) player to starting number eight, while assuming the captaincy, pushing Vos to partner Venter on the flank, relegating Corne Krige to the bench and Rassie Erasmus to Nowheresville.
On Saturday night, of course, it will all be forgotten. Italy will suffer another humiliating defeat, Skinstad will make a charming victory speech, Monty will score a hat-trick of tries and we’ll all be shouting for Australia and New Zealand to look out because the Springboks are back.
Believe that and you’ll believe that the Springbok crest should be replaced by an ostrich with its head buried firmly in the sand. It is a little early in the season for the plot to be lost so comprehensively, which suggests that something somewhere is very wrong. I wonder what it could be?