Our blood is green. So is our coach and so are our tactics and our players. Green as in unripe and immature, like a bunch of bananas on a tree rather than in Pick ‘n Pay. Nature makes sure that, given time, bananas will always ripen and mature, but can we be sure about this bunch of Springboks, or the administrators responsible for them?
While it has become something of a ritual for the festive season to coincide with Springbok coach culling season, there is good reason to believe that despite all evidence to the contrary Rudolf Straeuli will still be national coach when the new international season starts in June next year.
Straeuli may have made many mistakes and he was unquestionably appointed several years before he would have been ready for the job, but he will not fall on his sword in the way that his predecessor Harry Viljoen did. For one thing Straeuli, like his father before him, is a qualified lawyer and he would not have signed a contract that allowed his superiors to drop him on a whim.
For another, his superiors are fast running out of excuses for the non-performance of their appointees. The media are currently awash with former players desperately keen to get Rian Oberholzer sacked. The motive in many cases is revenge and while that’s never a good way to do business, it points the way to one of the fundamental issues afflicting our rugby.
Ask yourself this question: why is it that in order to find anyone from inside the system willing to be quoted as even mildlu critical of either the Springbok coach (whoever he may be) or Oberholzer, the media have to rely on ex-players?
The answer, of course, is that at the highest level our rugby exists in a climate of fear. Speak out and be damned; keep your counsel and watch the massive monthly cheques continue to roll in. The world rankings may have South Africa in the second division, but our Test players earn, on average, more than those of any other country. Given that fairly basic fact, you’d be mad to speak out.
So we have to wait for Robbie Fleck to sign for Bath before reading his whinge in Sports Illustrated. We have to wait for Cobus Visagie to retire from international rugby before he is ready to appear on behalf of the disgruntled on e.tv. You can be damn sure that neither would have said a dicky bird if they still believed they had a chance to play Test rugby again.
Now, team spirit is all well and good, but nearly always with the Springboks it engenders an us-against-them mentality — the ‘them†in question being the media. When Straeuli was coach of the Sharks he would frequently invite the press down to the dressing room or the team hospitality tent after a game. Eighteen months on from taking the Springbok job he is picking fights with journalists in the middle of a World Cup campaign.
That’s because, just like the players, Straeuli can see a telegraph pole stretched across the tracks in front of a speeding gravy train. This generation of Springboks will be the last to be absurdly well rewarded for playing consistently poorly. The gravy train will pull to a halt in 2005 at the negotiations for a renewal of the Newscorp broadcast rights deal.
After Sanzar Rugby is disbanded, the Tri-Nations and Super 12 scrapped — all three being regarded as non-cost-effective institutions — the trickle of disaffected ex-players will be subsumed by a mass of officials wanting to get their licks in while someone, anyone, is still willing to pay them to tell the truth about what went on in the corridors of power.
Until then expect the laager to remain closed and the status quo to reign supreme. And if you think that’s pathetic you should have seen the Boks against the All Blacks.