Dear Heyneke Meyer,
I have been a long time supporter of your coaching. From the early days at the South Western Districts Eagles, who you took to a surprise semi-final in the Currie Cup, to taking over a Bulls team that were perennial basement dwellers in Super Rugby and leading them to three titles. No, my facts are not wrong. The titles won under Frans Ludeke were using your game plan and your team. Add to that the four Currie Cup titles you mentored them to and that is a significant CV.
Over the last couple of years, I would hear nothing from detractors who said you did not know what you are doing at international level. Granted, you have relied on a number of older (more experienced if you will) players, but with a younger player being groomed to naturally take over that position in time. In this time, we have mostly witnessed the boring and largely ineffective forward dominated game plan, relying on one-off forwards bashing themselves up-field. Recently, with the selection of Damian de Allende and Jessie Kriel as the midfield pairing, I once again sat back with a knowing nod. The plan to win the Rugby World Cup is coming along nicely fellows! Lood de Jager has filled in more than adequately for the injured Victor Matfield and Vincent Koch is coming along nicely at tighthead prop.
But then the Springboks started losing. After each loss, you came up with more creative excuses than a teenager trying to explain away why he has not done his maths homework. The games against the Wallabies and the All Blacks could have gone either way. It was just a TMO call in each game that proved decisive. There were injuries at inconvenient times. The referee was inconsistent at scrum time. The opposition was allowed to get away with murder at the breakdown. The bottled water was still and not sparkling.
And that is when the realization hit me between the eyes. Your little black book of excuses has surely been used up by now. What if the Springboks face any of these issues during the Rugby World Cup? These excuses mean nothing if the Springboks are sitting in their first class seats on the flight back to Johannesburg. They should be playing around all of these challenges.
It came as a bit of a surprise to me that your contract was extended to 2019 before you could even be measured against the key metric in your contract. Success at the 2015 Rugby World Cup. Even Steve Hansen, who has a Rugby World Cup winners medal lying in his cupboard somewhere, was only given a two year extension with the All Blacks. I can only hope that your new contract has a few new metrics that include more performance requirements than is currently the case. Chasing Rugby World Cups only can be rather frustrating for Springbok supporters. Given some of the controversy around your selections at the moment, you need wins and you need them now.
Quite frankly, 5th place in the World Rugby rankings is not what South Africans expect or accept of their team. If your intention was to ensure that the Springboks land in the United Kingdom as under dogs, then it is mission accomplished and I am starting to like the 11/2 odds to win the Rugby World Cup that I can get on them at the time of writing. I will wait until after the game against Argentina in Mendoza this weekend to place my bet as I have a feeling that those odds will drift out even further. In case you didn’t know, you are the only Springbok coach who has a loss against both Argentina and Wales on his CV.
What is also of concern is the number of players that it seems you will be taking on the flight to the UK with you who have had little or no game time over the last number of months. I am a great fan of the players, but I am worried that they have simply not played at all. Fourie du Preez and Duane Vermeulen spring to mind. As for the captain you have pinned all your hopes on, Jean de Villiers, I agree that he has made an inspirational return to rugby after injury. What concerns me though is his limited time on the field, he has not proved that his still has the pace to play at international level.
So Heyneke, I think it is obvious for you to see that I am a very worried man. I want to see the Springboks parade the Rugby World Cup trophy through the streets of Johannesburg in the first week of November and throw green and gold streamers at them, but I am not going to spend the money on those streamers just yet.
In the words of the recently departed South African singer Crocodile Harris… “Give me the good news“?
“Main Photo:”
