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Comment: Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer
Cape Town – Peter de Villiers just handed his bosses some more rope if it is, as has been suggested, their mounting desire to hang him.
Already back in the firing line because of a fresh salvo of unprompted, nutcase comments regarding the Bees Roux matter and a strangely “verkrampte” threat to take his Springboks into some sort of stubborn laager as understandable public derision rings out, the coach’s orthodox rugby credentials are swiftly unravelling as well.
The facts confirm that more starkly than ever, following the national team’s gutsy but yet again broadly unsatisfactory Vodacom Tri-Nations showing against Australia in Bloemfontein on Saturday.
The Wallabies had last won in the Free State metropolis when it was a one-horse town … 77 years on and the bogey has been laid to rest.
Not only that but the Aussies snatched the secondary Mandela Plate for 2010, courtesy of Kurtley Beale’s quite brilliant match-tilting penalty at the death, and banished the Springboks to bottom finish in the Tri-Nations.
From champs to chumps in one year – sorry, but in such situations the coach tends to have to take the ultimate rap, doesn’t he?
You also cannot escape a feeling that as De Villiers’s public persona gets ever more kookoo, so have his charges succumbed in parallel measures to on-field eccentricity and schizophrenia.
In his defence, South Africa so very nearly pulled off a remarkable, comeback triumph that would have gone down as a famous one in the Bok annals.
They did show that the body lying in the middle of the road in a dishevelled state retains a pulse.
To claw back from a quite wretched, shambolic 31-6 down in the 25th minute to lead 39-38 in the last few minutes of the encounter takes great bottle, but then along came Beale to ensure that if any glass was going to be clinked it would be in the visiting dressing room.
The Boks claimed the second-half spoils by a handsome 26-10, but games aren’t won by halves – and when last did we actually witness a compelling 80-minute performance by John Smit’s World Cup champions, anyway?
It is a damning fact that the Wallabies registered five tries to three and also that the Boks were strongly indebted to Morne Steyn’s nine-out-of-nine performance off the kicking tee for so nearly nicking this one.
Sober neutrals will have noted with some amazement, too, that this was much more a matter of a game the “Wobblies” inexplicably tried to lose from an iron-grip position than one South Africa actually deserved to poach.
The Boks prided themselves, up to a few weeks ago, in their suffocating defence which saw opponents head constantly up dead-end streets and then be scuttled on the stealthy counter: instead they have leaked tries in this competition with hair-raising regularity.
The concession for the last two Saturdays alone has been nine, and this to a team with its own well-chronicled spooks and limitations.
It is simply not good enough.
Nobody in the Bok management must try to patronise us all by pointing anew to “character” as a twig of ongoing promise to clutch onto.
The side has lost whole forests of ground in the composure and organisational department, as evidenced by the fact that the lowest tally of points they have leaked in any Tri-Nations match this season is 29 (when they nevertheless lost by seven points to champions New Zealand at FNB Stadium).
Can South Africa pick up the pieces under De Villiers? If the wacky things he says in public are any indication of his cerebral contribution to strategic planning, it is just too tempting to cry “no” with conviction.
The 2011 World Cup is a year away. Yes, there would be some risk in introducing a fresh mastermind at this stage of the trek toward it.
Cruel as it may sound, I would suggest there is an even greater peril in the likelihood of “Div” only dragging the boat even closer to jagged rocks, while continuing to expose Springbok rugby to great mirth and ridicule worldwide with his incoherent ramblings.
I’ll give him this much: as things stand, his tenure has been better statistically than that of many predecessors, including as it does a series victory over the British and Irish Lions and a 2009 Tri-Nations that was as heart-warming as this one was inexplicably horrible.
He could get out now, on own terms, with a decent dollop of dignity intact.
Hang in belligerently and he may not have the luxury of determining the remaining length of his own tenure in Springbok rugby.
Something’s going to give … isn’t it?
