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Rudolph Lake
Johannesburg – The heads of Springbok coach Peter de Villiers and his two assistants, Dick Muir and Gary Gold, may all roll Monday when their performance reviews are done.
While nobody in the leadership of the South African Rugby Union (SARU) wanted to say anything on Saturday about the possibility of the coaches being axed, Sport24 has reliably learned that SARU are definitely considering changes to the coaching staff – and that none of the current three are safe in their positions.
From conversations with a number of top rugby officials and informed people, it appears that De Villiers may just survive. However, Muir and Gold’s days appear numbered following the Springbok team’s weak performances in this year’s Tri-Nations.
South Africa could win only one of their six Tests against the All Blacks and Wallabies.
That was then the Boks beat the Aussies at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria last month.
The coaching staff and team’s performances will be evaluated by a technical committee of SARU in Cape Town on Monday. De Villiers will have the opportunity to put his side of the story about why the Boks were so poor this year.
The technical committee is chaired by SARU vice-president James Stoffberg.
Other members of the committee are SARU president Oregan Hoskins, SARU deputy president Mark Alexander and Golden Lions president Kevin de Klerk.
De Villiers’ big support at grassroots level counts in his favour and may well be the reason that he survives when a decision is taken on the three Bok coaches’ futures.
SARU will, however, have to pay out any of the coaches if they are axed as they all have contracts until the end of next year.
There are a number of candidates that can replace Muir and Gold, with coaches like Allister Coetzee, Rassie Erasmus, Dawie Theron, Frans Ludeke, Heyneke Meyer and New Zealander John Mitchell mentioned by experts as strong candidates.
