Peter de Villiers: 'I'm a God-given talent'

rugby365‘s Jan de Koning takes a look at the strained relationship between Springbok coach Peter de Villiers and the media, as well as his often used muddled and synesthetic metaphors.

Love him or hate him, Springbok coach Peter de Villiers is a colourful character. At Monday’s media gathering at the South African team’s hotel the Bok coach was at his most entertaining (or irritating, depending on your view) best.

There is no doubt De Villiers has a strained relationship with the media and, despite his public utterances to the contrary, he does read and care what they say about him.

How else would you explain his numerous public and private run-ins with members of the media.

It is a fact that De Villiers declined the opportunity for ‘media training’ and elocution lessons – which could smooth over his relationship with the media.

He has also declined to have a translator at his side at media gatherings, which would allow him to speak in his first language – Afrikaans. This is common practice for many teams – like the French and Argentineans.

Having had the ‘privilege’ to be at a media conference conducted mainly in Afrikaans, it is easy to see how much more comfortable he is when speaking in his first language. The same applies when you have a one-on-one interview with him.

You sometimes get the idea that De Villiers deliberately provokes the media with his muddled speech. He appears to enjoy the attention and the reaction he gets.

He is fond of his metaphors, but as members of the press corps have suggested, you often need to decipher De Villiers.

However, this week he will have to explain himself in a private conversation with South African Rugby Union President Oregan Hoskins – the very man that once famously said De Villiers was appointed for “reasons other than rugby”.

It has been suggested that this conversation, between Hoskins and De Villiers, will not be a serious ticking off, maybe just a quiet chat to pull the Bok mentor back in line and give him some “guidance”.

The sad part is that the South African media has not been nearly as brutal in portraying De Villiers in a bad light as has been the case with the international media – especially this week when they have jumped at the opportunity to portray him as a person who condones eye-gouging.

The problem is that, because of his limited linguistics skills when speaking English, he fails to get his message across to members of the international media – who don’t have the same insight into his confused grammatical ways. I know, as an Afrikaans speaking person, exactly how easy it is to get it wrong.

But it is De Villiers’s choice to decline training and, as a result, he must bear the consequences.

But back to Monday’s comedy show – or media ruck – when the British and Irish press tried their utmost to provoke the Bok mentor. At times they succeeded.

You can’t recreate the atmosphere and the buzz every time De Villiers said something strange or confusing.

What we will do is put in print a few of his best metaphoric attempts at answering media questions and hopefully the readers will also be entertained – or irritated, again depending on your view.

Here are a few of De Villiers’ most entertaining answers:

Asked about the prevalence and increased incidents of eye gouging around the world:
De Villiers: “I’m against anything that’s not in the spirit of the game, anything. We won’t go to that lows of being negative, in such a positive game that we have. We’ve got brilliant players in this country, they are world class, most of them. To try and even prepare them to do little small things that belong outside in the Bushveld – if we want eye gouge any Lion we will go down to the Bushveld, then we eye gouge them and see if we can outrun them or they haul us in. But we will never, never encourage anybody to be part of negative or anything that brings the game into disrepute.”

De Villiers was asked, repeatedly, whether he still feels that flank Schalk Burger was not guilty of eye gouging. He was also asked if he had seen the TV evidence:
De Villiers: “Schalk’s nature and character is – if you know the man like I know him – he won’t ever … he is too physical, he is more physical than any player in the world – to go to that kind of message to show he is the boss on the rugby field. He will never, ever do it and I don’t think he did it, but we stand and abide by what’s happened there [at the judiciary]. So eye gouging is something that we as a team, and especially me, will definitely – as biting, as head butting, as spear tackling, all those things that don’t belong in the game. We want to promote this game amongst our youth, we want everybody to see how passionate we are about this game  and we want to bring that passion about in our country. We want this game to be the biggest nation-building tool that there ever can be and by encouraging stuff like that we will be fighting a lost cause – so, I will never, ever be part of something like that. I’m telling you, I watched the TV footage, I’m not saying anything – because it is against what we decided as a team. I watched the TV footage and I am still convinced there was nothing that he went on purpose – when he saw the footage it was something that he was ‘yoh’ [taken aback], but he never meant to go into anybody’s eye. I abide by what we said and will wait for the report.”

Asked if he thought stiffer penalties will discourage acts like these – also spear tackling:
De Villiers: “I’m part of this lovely game and I’m very honoured to be part of this lovely game and there are some things I will enhance while I’m part of this lovely game – negativity is not one of those things. I don’t make the laws, I don’t write the books, about [the length of] sentences, I only abide by them. I don’t appoint judicial officers, I don’t always agree with them, but then again I’m part of the system and if you can’t work within the system, if you want to have your own system, create your own world. So, there’s a lot of things that I don’t like in life, but while I’m part of this world I have to adjust to make it work.”

Asked how he thought Burger’s fingers make contact with Fitzgerald’s eye:
De Villiers: “Some of us have a hearing problem. I said, that we stand as a group by what the team said – we are waiting for report and if the report comes out and by any means says that Schalk is guilty of eye gouging then we just have to abide by that. I believe it won’t be the case, but we stand by that. We are waiting for the report and then I can answer your questions, I can’t give you any answer without the report. [It was then suggested he was ducking the issue]: I’m not ducking the issue. It is just that I am working in the system, I’m not like you [the media] that have no system, you can work wherever you want to work. We are working in a system where we wait until the report has been tabled, then we will react. We are waiting for the report se we can dissect it word for word and then come to you with an informed answer and then we don’t misunderstand each other again.”

Asked if he had spoken to Burger about the incident:
De Villiers: “We are not cross with each other. We sat down at breakfast this morning, we sat down last night until 12.12 [just after midnight Sunday] waiting for them to finish [at the hearing]. So, ja, I have spoken to him and as I expected, he is an honourable man. If you take him way from rugby he will be the best person to have him around you.”

Asked, based on his statement that Burger is an honourable man, if he felt that would be strong enough to overturn an appeal:
De Villiers: “What we must understand here, very, very clearly, is rugby is a contact sport and so is dancing. So guys who can’t take it, make the decision. If you guys are really clued up with this game, there was so much incidents that we can say we want to cite this guy for maliciously jumping into a guy’s face with his shoulder and stuff like that … why didn’t we do it? The reason why we don’t do stuff like that is this game will always be a game to us and sometimes you get away with things that you don’t even mean – sometimes you make decisions that’s right and wrong and you get away with it and we are so part, and honoured to be part of it. If we are going to win games in boardrooms and in front of television cameras like this and think we should go shop and say to ourselves, do we really respect this game that we really honour so much and the passion we have for it – do we really want to be part of it. And if this case that we are going on now, why don’t we all go to the nearest ballet shop, get some nice tutus, get a great dancing show going on – no eye gouging, no tackling, no nothing and then we’ll enjoy it. But in this game there will be collisions and the guy who wins the collision the hardest, that’s the guy we will always select. And if we are going to make it soft and we won a Test series and people don’t like it, I can’t do anything about it.”

Asked about criticism from the South African media and suggestions that he (De Villiers) is the weakest link in the Bok team:
De Villiers: “I’m not disappointed with them [the media]. Everybody in life has an opinion. I don’t react to opinions, I react on fact. If people think I am the weakest link, then we are bloody strong! I didn’t know about the perception, and I do not even have time to think about it. I know myself that I am a God-given talent. I am the best ever that I can be, so whatever you think about me doesn’t bother me. I know what I am, and I don’t give a damn.”

On the suggestion – from the Lions management – that the Springboks were lucky to win the first two Tests:
De Villiers: “I always describe lucky as getting into a bar and somebody hits you and misses, that’s lucky. But if there’s 80 minutes to play a game in and you at the end of the day look at the scoreboard and you are ahead, I think that is character more than luck. So people would say that our luck gives a new dimension to character.”

* What do you make of all this?