Peter De Villiers — not as bad as media would have us believe

Springbok rugby coach Peter De Villiers seems to be on a hiding to nothing. When his charges taste defeat – which has unfortunately happened rather regularly these past few weeks – he is roundly written off as incompetent and out of his depth by certain elements in the media. When they do manage to put things together – as was so evident this past weekend — his achievements are simply brushed off with ignorant comments like “These are the World Cup champions; it’s expected.” or even more bizarrely “They won because they played Jake White rugby.”

The Springboks won on Saturday because they kicked intelligently, ran into spaces rather than into players, used their set pieces well and protected their own ball. To my knowledge, that’s always been the fundamentals of intelligent rugby and to claim that this is Jake White’s very own patented style is rather absurd, a bit like saying that the grounding of the ball over the try-line is an example of Shaun Oakes’ rugby.

Sunday Argus sports writer Gavin Rich is rather fond of spewing this drivel. Reading his columns over the last few months, it’s fairly obvious that he is not a fan of De Villiers. Hailing the coach’s appointment as “rugby’s biggest mistake of the year”, and continuously lamenting the departure of Jake White, Rich makes no effort to appear objective in any way.

This week’s column reached new lows however, as he resorted to the type of gutter journalism usually confined to daily tabloids – namely, the use of an “unnamed source” to further peddle his agenda. To quote Rich himself – “… a very senior member of the management team approached me to ask me to go easy on De Villiers and used the following words in his appeal: ‘We are at a very sensitive stage, we know he is out of his depth at this level, but he is a nice guy and nice guys learn’. ”

For a journalist of his stature, it’s disappointing to see him having to take this route. It’s the equivalent of me sharing the comment by a very senior newspaper source, who claims that Rich’s columns need to be extensively rewritten and edited by subs, before eventually making it to print.

Besides these antics, I thought I would also take the opportunity to punch holes into other misconceptions that are dominating the media, various dinner tables and numerous braais these last few weeks.

“New Zealand and Australia are rebuilding. We have a settled team, we should be crushing these guys.”
Now, as far as I’m aware, we have a new coach, trying to instil new ideas. Surely we are rebuilding as well? Critics point to the fact that Australia and New Zealand have new look sides, but so do we. This season has seen the likes of Brian Mujati, Beast Mtawarira, Andries Bekker, Luke Watson, Adrian Jacobs, Conrad Jantjies, Odwa Ndungane and Jongi Nokwe being introduced to the side, amongst numerous others. We are definitely a team in transition; claims to the contrary are simply laughable.

“We shouldn’t be changing the way we play our rugby, we won the World Cup playing our physical, defensive style.”
There are two reasons why I have a problem with this. Firstly, the new law changes (the ELV’s) have made rugby a more open game, and I am strongly of the viewpoint that our traditional tight, forward dominated game plan would now be found wanting. The Bulls’ poor performance in the recent Super 14 should be proof enough. Second – and most importantly – is the fact that winning the World Cup seems to have blinded fans and critics alike. The toughest team we had to face was an average England side in the final, where we scraped through in a very tight contest. We somehow managed to avoid facing Ireland, France, Australia, and New Zealand – teams we have regularly struggled to beat over the last few years. Jake White turned us into a very competitive outfit, but the fact is we were never the best side in the world and it’s time that this argument was put to rest.

“Peter De Villiers advocates helter-skelter rugby and playing without any game plan.”
Sure, De Villiers wants the Springboks to embrace a more expansive style of rugby, but I find it hard to believe that he would send a team out on the field without any sort of game plan. My understanding is that he wants players to think more on their feet in a given situation and back their instincts, rather than drilling into their heads the fact that they must attack the blindside in the seventh phase and then kick the ball for the left touchline in the eighth phase. That would be an example of the “robotic” style of rugby that Jake White’s teams were often accused of. The problem here seems to stem from De Villiers’ poor communication skills when addressing the media, who have been all to happy to snap up yet another bizarre sound byte and run with it.

Despite the disappointing Tri-Nations campaign, I’m still optimistic about the Springboks. Saturday showed what could be possible if they continue down this road. For all the talk about De Villiers being out of his depth, the fact remains that his side has won in New Zealand, and has now beaten Australia by a record score. Let’s give the man more time and see what else he can do.