Big Vic to join Bok Dream Team?
Retired Springbok lock Victor Matfield may be the next big name to be added to Heyneke Meyer’s coaching Dream Team.
This website has reliably learnt that intense behind-the-scenes negotiations are underway to add the name of Matfield to an already impressive list of backroom staff that could also feature John McFarland, Jacques Nienaber, Rassie Erasmus, Paul Treu and Basil Carzis.
While the announcement of the new Bok coach, to replace Peter de Villiers, won’t be made till Friday, it is the country’s worst kept secret that Meyer has raced so far clear it has become a no-contest.
And with the South African Rugby Union’s brainstrust set to rubberstamp his appointment at a series of meetings on Thursday and Friday, the debate has now shifted to who will join Meyer’s backroom staff.
Matfield has made no secret of the fact that he did not want a foreign coach to take charge of the Boks, and late last year told this website that Meyer taught him everything about rugby.
“He installed everything [I know] and the way I look at rugby. It is difficult to compare other coaches to him because Heyneke got me as a youngster and made me,” he told this website in an interview to mark the Cape Town launch of his book, Victor: My Journey.
“I worked very well with Frans [Ludeke, the current Bulls coach], whereas Heyneke ‘formed’ me as a rugby player. I enjoyed both coaches.”
With Meyer set to be the Boks’ head coach, Matfield could easily be fast-tracked from a part-time Bulls advisory position to a full-time post on Meyer’s team.
The outcome of some boardroom battles in the next few days will determine if Meyer gets his Dream Team – with the Bulls and Stormers administrators becoming very wary over the expected exodus of coaching intellect from their franchises.
The intense behind the scenes negotiations will also determine if respected coaching gurus like Nienaber and McFarland will be released by their unions.
It is understandable that the Stormers would not be happy to lose the expertise of a Nienaber just a couple of weeks after Erasmus walked out on them.
The loss for the Bulls camp could be much more devastating – McFarland, Carzis and Matfield.
The other coaches on SARU’s list of “preferred candidates” – which at the outset contained the names of Meyer, De Villiers, Allister Coetzee and Gert Smal – may wonder why they have not been afforded the opportunity to assemble such a prestigious squad and simply had to accept SARU’s terms?
However, there is a train of thought that SARU are merely repaying Meyer for the great injustice he was done four years ago, when De Villiers was appointed ahead of him in controversial fashion.
Dispatches from Newlands now suggest that Coetzee was dropped from that SARU ‘shortlist’ without anybody actually speaking to him.
At least De Villiers was afforded the courtesy of an informal chat with SARU CEO Jurie Roux, when the message was loud and clear: “There will be no extension for Divvy.”
By Jan de Koning
