Springbok rugby should be at the mountaintop right now. World champions for less than a year, a strong case could be made for the current squad of players being the best since readmission in 1992. They have world-class players in every unit of the starting 15.
Beast Mtawarira, Victor Matfield, Schalk Burger, Fourie du Preez, Jean de Villiers and Bryan Habana. These are not one-season wonders who happened to fluke their way into the Test side: these are players that every nation in the world would give their eyeteeth to possess. Yet the Springboks lost four out of six games in this year’s Tri-Nations and finished last.
Let us dispense with the excuses. The team was not in a ‘rebuilding phaseâ€. Os du Randt retired after the World Cup final, but no one else did. Moreover, those players who chose to swell their bank balances with the pound or franc were welcomed back into the fold after a swift about-turn by the South African Rugby Union (Saru) on the subject of foreign-based players.
New Zealand and Australia were not great sides. Both had lost a slew of players to Europe on the back of their quarterfinal exits at the World Cup. Each could fairly claim to be in a ‘rebuilding phase†and injuries forced their respective coaches to include some far from stellar players.
And ultimately that’s what should really rankle with Springbok supporters. The myopic eye of history will reflect on 2008 as a year when the All Blacks and Wallabies were better than the Springboks. No shame in that. It happens most years. But this should have been our year! Posterity must not be allowed to cloud that fact.
Apportioning blame for a shocking year helps no one, but point the finger at the players and the administrators. The players may rightly have believed that they had achieved everything worthwhile in 2007.
In addition to the World Cup, the Bulls had beaten the Sharks with the last move of an exceptional Super 14 final.
That group of players was better rewarded financially than any of their predecessors, yet many still chose to move overseas, including captain John Smit and vice-captain Victor Matfield. Saru felt let down by the exodus and attempted to resuscitate the old rule about foreign-based players being ineligible for Springbok selection.
Saru president Oregan Hoskins admitted on the day that Peter de Villiers was appointed that he was not the first choice. The time had arrived in the history of South African rugby for a person of colour to fill the position of Springbok coach and De Villiers was the man.
Except that he wasn’t. It is possible that fact became obvious to the press before the players. It was they who were forced to interpret De Villiers’s playful mangling of the English language to a bemused public. Not since the early days of George Bush’s presidency had there been such wellsprings of poorly digested wisdom.
‘They misunderestimate me,†said Dubya. ‘I am a pitbull on the pant-leg of opportunity.â€
‘So that’s exactly what we do,†said De Villiers. ‘You have to look at history is repeating itself, and I’m not saying that I’m God.â€
The players learned soon enough that the new coach was out of his depth. Senior Springboks called Sharks coach Dick Muir to persuade him to take the job as De Villiers’s deputy. Now comes the difficult part. Since Muir and Gary Gold were appointed by Saru to help De Villiers adapt to his new lofty position, why aren’t they copping the same criticism as the coach?
Why in all the debate about the need for ‘structured†rugby, has no one reminded us of Muir’s oft-repeated phrase at Sharks press conferences: ‘The players need to learn to play what’s in front of them.â€
When Muir coached his final game for the Sharks, the semifinal defeat against the Waratahs, he admitted an error of judgement. He said he wished he had placed more trust in the ability of his players at the beginning of the season, instead of coaching them to play a conservative game plan.
Maybe it was Muir who encouraged the adoption of open rugby in the mind of De Villiers. The head coach seemed to prefer unpredictability to structure, a philosophy that allowed the inclusion of Conrad Jantjes, Ricky Januarie and Adi Jacobs, among others.
And if De Villiers’s reign is remembered for anything, it will be for his success in transformation. His many critics did not choose to attack his use of players of colour: they saw beyond skin colour to the paucity of ideas lying beneath the surface veneer of a big moustache and a high voice.
Which makes it all the more strange that De Villiers’s immediate response to allegations of sexual impropriety should be of the knee-jerk kind: he threatened to resign and ‘give the game back to the whitesâ€. That’s the kind of statement that betrays the coach’s insecurity. It fails to address the core issue: the team is losing because it has wilfully retreated from the error-free rugby that won the World Cup. By the time De Villiers realises that, it may already be too late.