On the flipside
Former rugby365 staffer Chris Waldburger, now part of the general populace but still very keen on his rugby, takes a very different look at the Springboks’ performance against the British and Irish Lions. In fact, you could say he is on the flipside of the coin!
At the end of a tour, it is customary to choose a Player of the Series in celebration of the rugby played. However, at the conclusion of this tour, I have decided that the most pertinent award should be The Worst Performance of the Series, and I will opt not to award this dubious honour to any of the players, instead I will award the ‘prize’ to the South African rugby media.
What on earth is the matter with the majority of our press? Since when did beating the Lions (a team made up of four strong and proud rugby nations) justify the absolute slating that the coach and team have received?
And while I am on that point, since when did the British media have the right to tell us what we should think of our coach?
These are the facts. Peter de Villiers inherited a team that narrowly beat Fiji, Argentina and England in succession to win the World Cup. If those performances had been taken out of the context of a World Cup, the press would have torn into Jake White with all their cynical ferocity. Journalists would have bemoaned the conservative game plan incessantly, much like they bemoan the current pattern of choice.
Under De Villiers, the team emerged out of a post-Cup malaise (see the Bulls Super 14 performance of 2008) induced by administrative confusion and player exhaustion, to beat New Zealand in Dunedin for the first time ever, and claim an unbeaten record on an end-of-year tour for the first time since 1997! And now we have beaten the Lions, who are made up of two strong Welsh and Irish sides, both of whom would give the All Blacks and the Wallabies a good run for their money, based on what we saw the French do during their Australasian sojourn.
Yet now we have a situation in which the press has created a mythology of this unbeatable Springbok outfit, tarnished by the errant Peter de Villiers. I am going to get ridiculed for saying this, but to me it smacks of a touch of residual racism.
Firstly, the mythology is completely invented. For one thing, had Mike Catt and Jason Robinson not gotten themselves injured during the World Cup final, we may just have had an upset on the cards. Yes, the victory was stupendous, and Jake White had prepared a marvelous squad but this mythology of a perfect, disciplined team is just outlandish, and one can’t help feeling that it has been concocted specifically to destroy de Villiers.
Secondly, the current Springbok team just beat a team made up of four regular starting line-ups. In my opinion, every time the Lions don’t win a series, it is a little bit embarrassing for them. Imagine Australia, New Zealand and South Africa formed a single team and toured France. If they lost such a series, the losing coach would be instantly sacked, and the French coach hailed as a rugby genius. Yet strangely the reverse has happened here: De Villiers is a clown and McGeechan a rugby genius. Give me a break. The Springboks didn’t perform perfectly. But rugby isn’t gymnastics. You play to win, if I remember, not for the plaudits of some guys sitting in a press box. And here’s a newsflash to the media, we won.
Let me be honest. De Villiers is a bit eccentric. He says some funny things and sometimes he says some silly things. And this kind of thing really annoys the cynical Europeans, whose countries often have to put up with bores like Gordon Brown and Prince Charles for inspiration. But that doesn’t mean we have to join in on the slating. South Africa is different. We aren’t slick and proper. we’re all a bit funny, just like Peter de Villiers. That’s how we play our rugby. We win matches we should never win, and we lose a couple we should never lose. Give me that and a few World Cups any day rather than the slick professionalism of Australia and the All Blacks. I mean, look at the Bulls for crying out loud. Loftus is a really funny place. But that’s South African rugby for you, and it’s that kind of thing that makes our country an infinitely more interesting place than England at the moment.
If Peter de Villiers were as bad a coach as everyone is saying he is, where are the players criticizing him? Why haven’t the senior guys retired, having won a World Cup and beaten the Lions? My bet is that they are still confident that the current Springbok outfit can do the business against the likes of New Zealand and Australia.
The Tri-Nations is bound to be tough. It has always been a little unfair on the Boks with their unique travel requirements. I hope we win it. But we may not. The other teams we have to play are the world’s best – just like us. But win or lose, the least we can do is set aside all this childish innuendo perpetuated by our press. It’s detracting from the spectacle of what is one of humanity’s great sporting pursuits.
Here’s to Smitty, Pdivvy, and the rest of the boys.
* Do you agree with Chris? Are the media too harsh?
