Bokke’s embarrassment of riches

The Bokke boast players who are the undisputed world’s best in the following positions: wings (both), inside centre, scrummie, blindside (in our sense), lock (both — with emphasis). In the following positions we have players who on their day need stand back to no-one and in some cases are on their way to being the world’s best: fullback, outside centre, openside, loosehead and hooker. Add to that a captain who is indisputably the world’s best, a coaching staff with the right vision and a good balance of playing experience and coaching nous between them and you start to wonder why there’s still so much gloom and misdirection in our rugby conversation.

I don’t think it matters much who the coaches select to play alongside Jean de Villiers. He and Adi Jacobs know each other from age-group rugby and had a whale of a time wreaking midfield havoc together last year. De Villiers and Jaque Fourie have a famous partnership and he and Wynand Olivier are both too good not to gel. It really shouldn’t matter who runs onto the field on Saturday. That’s the idea behind having depth. In addition to that Adi and Wynand can both deputise effectively at 12 and you have to wonder what the fuss is about.

Ditto flyhalf. Ruan and Morne are two sides of the flyhalf coin, one blessed with vision and virtuoso running skills, the other has a pukka laser-guided platteland boot. Ruan has come under fire for supposedly being weak with the boot. Way to go people. The boy is blessed with the kind of skills no-one can coach and you want to nail him for something he can rectify spending two hours a day out in the field with Percy. If you want to put anyone under fire, it should be the provincial and age-group coaches who don’t allow him to run freely at the advantage line and work on his ball-in-hand game. The boy has shown glimpses of some running ability so leave him to be tagged as a Braam Mark II? This is the debate we should be having. He plays behind the country’s most dominant pack, why is he not allowed to run more? He has his boot to fall back on.

Scrummie. Ricky Januarie is fat. Anybody with two eyes can see that there are a few Gatsbys poking out from underneath his tighter-than-normal fit jersey. The “neck support” fat at the base of his skull doesn’t help matters either. And yes, it is embarrassing for a full-time professional athlete. I also happen to think it is a damning indictment on the WP coaching staff that he was allowed to get so badly out of shape. But here’s the deal, dropping him and blooding a new guy against the kind of teams that Januarie’s skill set and instincts are best suited for does not help anyone. A fit Januarie stands back to none bar Du Preez in SA. Arguably the world too. So why relegate him to the wasteland that is the Currie Cup opening rounds when all the boy needs is conditioning training under the (clearly) more watchful eyes of the national coaches? Do we want a settled team with world-class players in each position or a flavour of the week merry-go-round? The idea surely is for the Bokke to build for the next World Cup with two scrummies who offer you the best of both worlds like they have done over the past few years?

I could go on, Schalk vs Heinrich, Guthro and The Beast, John Smit and a specialist tighthead (this one boggles the mind — Captain Awesome is more than holding up his own at tighthead, Bismarck is developing nicely alongside him and we have young Ralepelle coming up the ranks).

Here’s a position that should be having us troubled and flinging mud (as we do) about — cover at lock. Andries Bekker and Johan Muller are adequate back-up. And no more. That for me is a problem. There just isn’t the same level of quality in depth at lock. A couple of injuries could see us go from owning line-outs one week to hoping like hell our players play out of their skin. That is how big the gulf in class is for me. So where are our next world-class locks? Or are we not giving the current ones the right development?

Let’s get in a froth about that.