Springbok coach Jake White is beginning to understand the media. Bad news sells newspapers. So when the first Springbok squad of the season was announced on Saturday, was there a nationwide chorus of praise from the fourth estate about the inclusion — at last! — of Bulls hooker Gary Botha? Of course not.
Instead everyone concentrated on the players who had been retained from last year’s Tri-Nations winning squad, despite currently displaying less form than a septuagenarian catwalk model. Step, or rather, strut forward Marius Joubert and Joe van Niekerk.
White was nonplussed by the reaction to his squad. He has been one of the most sought after after-dinner speakers in the country ever since the concluding Tri-Nations match of last season. Every speech he gives contains the same basic ingredients: John Smit is the best captain and best hooker in the country and consistency of selection is the key to success.
White repeats these views at every press conference, yet there was in some quarters genuine shock that the national coach should have the temerity to back his own views instead of those of the armchair critics. Good on him, even if he’s wrong.
Perhaps the most significant of White’s inclusions were those of Breyton Paulse and Danie Coetzee, players who have signed to play their future club rugby in, respectively, France and England. Until White rewrote the eligibility book, the action of these two players would have seen them struck off the list of those eligible to play for the Springboks.
Indeed, it could well be argued that Paulse is past his peak and right to seek a lucrative pension, while Coetzee is no more than a workmanlike pro who happened to be in the right place (Pretoria) at the right time (when one of the greatest of all Bulls packs was being assembled).
The point is that White has now built on his first year in charge, when he needed to seek special dispensation to include Percy Montgomery and Jaco van der Westhuizen, to send out a clear message that future Springbok teams will be assembled from the best available talent wherever they may be playing.
That’s such a simple philosophy, yet successive regimes since readmission railed against it as fundamentally antithetical to a successful national side. Unpatriotic, they said, and when that xenophobic argument was shot down they said that Newscorp had written it into their broadcast contract.
Now, at last, the door is open for young players who want to improve their game to go and play in Europe instead of either studying a family tree for signs of an uitlander forebear or wasting three years qualifying to play for Australia.
It’s yet another example of how we love to make things difficult for ourselves in this country. As another instance, while Perth’s new Super 14 team are busy poaching players from other unions, members of the South African Rugby Union (Saru) management committee (Manco) are busy serving writs to each other for acting unconstitutionally.
Eighteen months after taking office on a metaphorical white charger, the writing is apparently on the wall for Saru president Brian van Rooyen. If he is indeed shown the door he may care to reflect on the first few months of his term when he made the bold decision to get rid of the Super 12 regions and return the tournament to the provinces.
He was subsequently talked out of the idea over cocktails, leading to a messy resignation from Morné du Plessis. Had Van Rooyen stuck to his guns back then, things may have been very different right now.
As it stands, the only thing likely to save the higher echelons of Saru’s management is exactly what saved it last year: success on the field. It will be a while before the Springboks begin their campaign, but in the meantime the Bulls are flying the flag for South Africa in the semifinals of the Super 12.
It has been said before, but rarely has it seemed truer, that teams who know when to peak win the Super 12. Hitherto the Waratahs have been the kings of early season dynamism followed inevitably by late-season ennui, while the Crusaders simply know how to win when it really matters.
This year the Waratahs kept winning right through the log series, but there can be no doubt that the Bulls are the form team of the competition, on the back of a five match winning streak. So in Sydney on Saturday it will be Aussie nous against Pretorian passion. The latter approach may win more than it loses at Loftus, but away from home the Bulls will need something more.
They have a slim chance, slimmer, in fact, than the Hurricanes have against the Crusaders in Christchurch. The early exchanges will tell all and, if Bryan Habana looks like a spectator rather than a participant, it will mean that the Bulls have bought into the legend of an invincible pack and forgotten that rugby is a more complicated game than that. If that transpires, then defeat will ensue as sure as night follows day.