Gary Gold (Gallo Images)

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Gold said at the team’s training camp at Shimla Park in Bloemfontein that while his team had been heavily criticised over the length of the current Vodacom Tri-Nations series, that much of it was warranted.

The Boks were on the receiving end of a number of barbs as they lost four matches in a row, but much of the criticism has been leveled at Bok coach Peter de Villiers, whose statements in the media seem to have incurred the wrath of the media and many fans.

De Villiers went further this week, saying the team had “closed the laager” and issuing a bold statement that “if you’re not for us, then you are against us”. The closing ranks talk has been echoed by a feeling in the camp that they are being targeted at times by a number of people who don’t particularly like the coach and not necessarily for their own shortcomings in their own game plan.

Gold went as far as saying criticism was “a healthy thing” for the team but again reiterated that then it needed to be rugby-focused and not personal in its delivery.

“Criticism is a healthy thing as long as it is directed at the performance of the team and not personally at individuals. If the criticism is fair – like I thought it was in a lot of the poor performances overseas - we must take it on the chin,” Gold said.

“We want to get better all the time. Our objective as coaching staff is to ensure that we don’t drop our standards. There hasn’t been any bit of criticism that we have read, that we have not known ourselves already by Sunday morning after all three of us have gone through the game with a fine tooth comb.

“Criticism is part and parcel of what we do. We’re not going to cry about it, but it would be in everyone’s best interests if criticism was based on poor performance issues which we can go away and fix it.”

The feeling has been exacerbated by a mistimed comment by De Villiers this week that the team supports Blue Bulls rugby player Bees Roux, currently on trial for alleged murder of a metro police officer.

While De Villiers made it clear he was speaking of sympathy for a fellow rugby player and didn’t condone the deed, there has been an avalanche of criticism in that he failed to mention the family of the slain policeman.