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Tough calls face De Villiers

JJ Harmse

It is not easy being a coach. Just when you think you have all your bases covered, up pops something extraordinary that you did not anticipate.

Can you imagine how Peter de Villiers must have felt when he saw Conrad Jantjes breaking his leg after he witnessed Frans Steyn limping off the field?

Can you imagine how Richard Cockerill must have felt when it wasn’t a training ground move that won him a berth in the Heineken Cup final, but the nerves of steel of Jordan Crane’s kicking?

Those two very different emotions are part and parcel of rugby. You have your good times and you have your bad ones. The lesson is to ride the wave when the going is good, but also to understand that you will have to swim against the tide soon thereafter if you want to catch the next wave.

It is interesting to see De Villiers again talking about national contracts. It is nothing new. Jake White wanted it, Rudolph Straeuli wanted it and whoever succeeds De Villiers will want it as well.

Will it solve the problem we have? I don’t think so, and again it might be an uncontrollable factor that will stop that.

Down the drain

Where is Super rugby going? According to John O'Neill, it is going down the drain because of South Africa’s insistence to protect the Currie Cup.

In 2011, we are made to believe, New Zealand and Australia will be playing in their own time zones with Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Japan and maybe even Nui and the Solomon Islands!

Where will that leave us? Of course the possibility of us playing in Europe has been investigated and it is quite possible that it might fly if needed.

But then, will the national coach still want national contracts for his players? And will he still ignore overseas-based players if those players are actually playing against local ones for three, four months of the year?

The difficulty for someone like De Villiers is that his long term vision might be shared by his administrators, but other forces may determine the parameters.

Now look at the plight of our Super 14 coaches. They knew in early February that one of them would be coaching in his last Super 14, as the axe was bound to fall on someone, according to the law of averages. They knew injuries would play a huge part in their success or failure. Stormers coach Rassie Erasmus got the raw deal there no doubt, while the Bulls' Frans Ludeke has lived a charmed life.

They knew that touring would be important to their final log positions and especially Cheetahs coach Naka Drotské knew he was in for a hiding by only playing his first home game in Round 8.

They knew some refereeing calls would cost them - or not (remember the Sharks v Chiefs TMO debacle?) and some judicial matters would have an impact on their progress.

Sometimes you get lucky, like Rory Kockott was. Can you imagine the same penalty dished out with say, Bakkies Botha ‘slapping’ Richie McCaw in Christchurch?

Still, all the coaches soldiered on, believing that this could be the year they taste success. At this stage, Lions coach Loffie Eloff, Erasmus and Drotské must be cursing the gods and the stars and anyone else that it simply did not happen for them.

Ludeke and Sharks coach John Plumtree are still doing well, although the latter is probably getting desperate on how to get the 'mojo' back for the Sharks.

They also had their fair share of uncontrollables, but somehow got the lucky breaks when it mattered most. The fact that they have the most experienced squads and the best players is also a plus.

Next weekend will determine which of these two will keep on smiling and which one will walk away, realising that even if he had most of the lucky breaks, most of the time, it still wasn’t to be.

Apply his mind

This all should be of importance to De Villiers. He has experienced first-hand how cruel fate can be when he lost Steyn and Jantjes in the space of an hour or so. He now needs to apply his mind. Let us hope playing Jaque Fourie at fullback is not how he does it.

Fourie is the best No 13 in the country and that is where he should play. Yes, Adi Jacobs is good enough to play there, but Fourie is better. Just as Ruan Pienaar is a great scrumhalf, but Fourie du Preez is better. Let's hope he doesn’t make the mistake of putting someone in a position in order to protect another player.

Depth is one thing, but fate is another. De Villiers - and all of us for that matter - did not anticipate that we'd have a problem at fullback a mere six weeks before the first Test against the Lions. But cometh with the hour, cometh with the man... I hope.

De Villiers will have to make a crucial call in the next couple of weeks. Let’s hope he calls it right.

Read JJ every Sunday in Rapport

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