LIONS TOUR NEWS ROUND-UP:PETER DE VILLIERS allowed himself a wry smile on surveying the sea of faces when he walked into a room in a Pretoria hotel, ostensibly to announce the South Africa team for tomorrow night's game against a Namibia Invitational team in Windhoek.
A media posse had made the one-hour road journey from Johannesburg to elicit his thoughts on the upcoming Test series against the Lions. The Springbok coach, flanked by captain John Smit and assistants Gary Gold and Dick Muir, on being asked the first question about the Lions welcomed the visitors in Afrikaans, before translating his comments into English.
He smiled: “You’re very welcome in this country. Your question was again? No, no I haven’t forgotten.” De Villiers’ pronouncements are far from bland and periodically laced with a sense of humour that occasionally strays to the mildly eccentric.
“All coaches are the same. We’re always fighting and praying for more time. If we come across things that we didn’t do properly, we always blame time. The one thing that we as a team adopted is that there are a few things that we can control (while) there are other things that we can’t control. Those things that we can’t control, we live and abide by what’s the best for the team.”
De Villiers, shorn of the Bulls contingent on duty in the Super 14 final on Saturday against the Chiefs, announced a Springbok team that includes three new caps, flanker Jean Deysel, fullback Earl Rose and centre Morgan Newman and a replacements bench laden with a handful of front-line performers.
The match was arranged in order to provide match practice ahead of the Lions series. De Villiers has no injury concerns, confirming that players like Jean de Villiers (on the bench) and Ruan Pienaar are 100 per cent fit before conversation invariably returned to the upcoming Lions matches.
Asked whether the series presented an opportunity to exorcise the ghosts of 1974 and 1997 – South Africa lost 3-0 and 2-1 respectively to the Lions – the Springbok coach unequivocally dismissed any notion of revenge.
“What it means now to me is the most important thing. We are not here to rectify the past. We don’t want to be part of history; we want to rewrite the history books, be part of a success story.
“In 1974 you (the Lions) had a lot of outstanding players, guys who were really in a class of their own. You sometimes only get that once in a lifetime and you had it then. That is over and done with.
“The guys you have now are good but they will never be like the ’74 Lions. They won’t be legends in their own time like most of them (’74) became. That’s a big difference for me. We are going to try and win the series for now; not for ’97 (either). There’s a few of those guys who are dead and buried already so they won’t know what we are doing. By trying to do it for them, it won’t work.
“I am very privileged to be part of the Springbok set-up and that (feeling) won’t change ever in my life. . . . What makes the Lions special is a 12-year wait; that is the only thing. Our players are very professional. They know what it takes to be the best and to beat the best. The one thing they work hard for is to be leaders in world rugby. . . . We have a responsibility towards our country and supporters to do our best.”
De Villiers was invited for an opinion on the Lions captaincy.
“I was pleasantly surprised because (Brian) O’Driscoll was the last captain of the Lions (2005) and he was the successful captain of the Grand Slam champions; so that is the only reason why we were a bit surprised.”
He had predicated his comments by saying a similar (ish) situation exists in South Africa where the national captain John Smit, didn’t lead the Sharks before adding “he (Smit) is not a captain of the franchise but you would have to look very far to find a better leader anywhere”.
De Villiers confirmed that once he had decided on his match 22 he would release the extended national squad members back to their unions to play against the Lions. His captain addressed the final inquiry about whether South Africa were a better side now than the one that won the 2007 World Cup in France.
“I’d like to think that we have moved forward from where we were in 2007. I would like to think that we can pose a bigger threat than we did in 2007 . . .”
SOUTH AFRICA(v Namibia): E Rose; J Nokwe, M Newman, M Bosman, O Ndungane; P Grant, R Januarie; B Mtawarira, B du Plessis, J Smit (capt); J Muller, A Bekker; H Brussow, J Deysel, R Kankowski. Replacements: A Strauss, W du Preez, S Sykes, J Smith, S Burger, J Vermaak, J de Villiers, A Jacobs, JP Pietersen.
