S
Steve-o
Guest
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/nov/1...team-rugbyunion
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>
What's funny is that this writer implies there was some kind of sanity in SARU when White was still around...
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>
It has been little more than a year since South Africa and England contested the World Cup final in Paris. They meet again at Twickenham on Saturday and quite a bit has happened to both between times. England's tribulations have been much dissected, but no amount of dubious manoeuvring on the coaching front and frolics with a girl called Angel can really hope to compete with the soap opera that has been going on in South Africa.
Life after Jack White, who coached the Springboks to the 2007 world ***le - and is about to reappear as mentor to the Barbarians team who play Australia at Wembley next month - has been a little different. Peter de Villiers, the successor to White, is the first black coach of the Springboks and has proved a flamboyant front man. Since his appointment, South African rugby, never a boring place at the quietest of times, has made for compelling drama.
First of all, there was the hoopla surrounding his election in January. The South African Rugby Union voted him in by 10 votes to nine over the more obviously qualified - and white - Heyneke Meyer, who has since moved to Leicester.
The president of Saru, Oregan Hoskins, hardly handed De Villiers a powerful mandate when he said: 'I want to be honest with South Africa and say the appointment did not take into account only rugby reasons. We took into account the issue of transformation in rugby very, very seriously.'
De Villiers had made his name coaching South Africa's youth teams, so his credentials were far from convincing, and he has been on the back foot from the word go.
But what has followed, for those of us removed from the chaos of South African rugby, has never been less than entertaining. De Villiers has taken to his back foot with all the flamboyance and eccentricity of a David Gower.
Here is a sample from one of his first press conferences: 'What we try to tell them [the players] is when you point your finger into the sky don't concentrate on the finger because you'll miss all the heavenly glory out there. Concentrate on the heavenly glory that you can bring.'
Since then, the eccentric quotes have poured forth, outsiders delighting as De Villiers launches off down ever-weirder avenues of contemplation, the fruits of which will surely soon have a website of their own. In South Africa, though, the worry is that his verbal meanderings are matched by a woolly rugby philosophy and a team who do not know their own mind, still less his.
His track record so far is every bit as perplexing as the man. South Africa came last in a Tri Nations that included humiliating home defeats to New Zealand and Australia, but also a first win in Dunedin. Then they finished up walloping the Aussies by a record 53-8. They have also beaten grand slam winners Wales three times and put 60 past Argentina.
It was after the win over Australia in Johannesburg that things began to become really colourful. The constant haranguing of his countrymen, and the suggestions that he was but a puppet, reached a pitch after South Africa had lost meekly to Australia in Durban the week before.
The Springboks reacted in some style with the record win and De Villiers lashed out, likening his plight to that of Jesus: 'The same people who threw their robes on the ground when Jesus rode on a donkey were the same people who crowned him and hit him with sticks and stuff like that, and were the same people who said afterwards how we shouldn't have done that, he's the son of God. So that's exactly what we do. You have to look at history as repeating itself. And I'm not saying that I'm God.'
Now things started to unravel further for him. News broke of some CCTV footage allegedly showing De Villiers having sex in a car park. One of Saru's press officers, Chris Hewitt, was said to have used it to blackmail him into picking a certain player. This was quickly denied, although it was acknowledged that an employee had told De Villiers of the tape's existence.
The footage never came to light and De Villiers spoke out in emotional terms at the depths to which people would stoop to try to get him out and of the effect it would have on his wife and daughters. He said he was too exhausted each night to do anything other than sleep and that his hotel bills never showed so much as an adult movie on them. 'I don't even bother to do it in my room, so why would I go out looking for that kind of stuff?'
He also spoke about resigning and giving the job 'back to the whites' - a remark for which he later apologised.
The tape would appear to have been a hoax. Hewitt was suspended and later resigned. And just over two weeks ago he died in a plane crash during a flying lesson.
Since then South African rugby has been rocked by another dubious recording. This time it was of Luke Watson, a Springbok and vociferous anti-apartheid campaigner, as well as a close friend of Hewitt, damning the sport in his country as 'controlled by Dutchmen' during a private conversation in which he spoke of being ostracised by his Springbok team-mates and of his wish to vomit on the Springbok jersey. The case that Saru brought against him was thrown out last week after the presiding officer was shown not to have the authority to hear it.
It all makes Paris in 2007 seem a long time ago. If Martin Johnson should ever start to feel the demands of his new job becoming unreasonable, he might take a quick look across at the opposition camp on Saturday and remember what he sees.[/b]
What's funny is that this writer implies there was some kind of sanity in SARU when White was still around...
