Springbok coach starts to see Red

JOHANNESBURG – A bad week for South Africa in the Super 14 coupled to the naming of the British and Irish Lions side would have had the effect of placing Springbok coach Peter de Villiers on full campaign alert.

The national coach was obviously distracted by the campaigns surrounding the general elections, but with all that out of the way the focus will switch from his politics to his rugby policies.
De Villiers will be at the core of the drive to beat the Lions and Week 10 would have had the effect of focusing his mind on what most, certainly the venerable readers of the SuperWrap, would call the real business at hand.
And Jean de Villiers’s injury was exactly the kind of news De Villiers (the coach) and his fellow Springbok planners Dick Muir and Gary Gold would not have wanted to hear – that plus worrying signs of fatigue in the Sharks camp and a lack of sharpness in the Bulls.
The Stormers and the Cheetahs have not been much help to the coach’s state of mind and a win by the Lions over the Reds was pretty much meaningless.
The unspoken fear of this year’s Super 14, from a South African perspective, must be the fact that the Boks might have played themselves out by the time of the first big push against the Lions on June 20.
So the last thing De Villiers needs is injuries to key players and he must be watching with increasing alarm as Bryan Habana gets overhauled in a sprint, as Victor Matfield nurses a damaged shoulder, as Schalk Burger battles to be his usual imposing presence, as Juan Smith plays himself into the ground for the Cheetahs, as the prop/hooker face-off between John Smit and Bismarck du Plessis remains unresolved and as Ruan Pienaar continues to sit out while none of the other pivots, to use coach-speak, puts their hand up.
Never forget that one of the key reasons for the Springboks’ success in the Rugby World Cup in 2007 was that Jake White managed to rest so many of his ‘galacticos.’
It is a luxury De Villiers won’t have – especially as the Sharks and the Bulls, who will supply the bulk of the Springboks, will have to keep going at the punishing rate demanded by the Super 14 at least until May 16 (when league play ends) and perhaps/hopefully beyond that in the playoffs.
The Super 14 Final will be on May 30 – the same day the 2009 Lions start their tour against what will be known as the ‘Royal XV’ at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg.
– Superrugby