PdV: ‘I am the boss’
7 Dec 2009
SA Rugby magazine’s hard-hitting interview with the Springbok coach.
Your critics say that your technical knowledge of the game is poor, and that all the technical stuff surrounding the Boks’ game plan comes from your assistant coaches and the senior players. What’s your response to that?
I went to Wales to do my level-two coaching course, and paid my own way. The way it works is that you do the course and then go coach for another two years before you return to do the level-three course. I had just come back to South Africa when the Welsh Rugby Union called me and said they were so impressed by my technical knowledge of the game that they wanted me to do the next course straight away. I chose to do those courses in Wales, because I’ve always admired the great players they had in the ’70s, like Gareth Edwards and JPR Williams. I knew I would be working with equally talented players back in South Africa.
So you do make technical contributions in the Bok set-up?
Of course. When I said the All Blacks were scrumming illegally in last year’s Tri-Nations, I had video footage to back it up. No one else in the Bok squad had spotted it. The same thing happened when I questioned the Wallabies’ scrumming methods this year. I was the only person who saw what they were doing. I also make technical observations about other areas of the game, like lineouts and attack.
Do the senior Boks run the show as some have suggested?
Let me make one thing clear – I am the boss, I am the CEO of South African rugby.
In John Smit’s autobiography he explains how the coaches and the senior players meet the day after a Test to plot the way forward for the week ahead. Why did you decide to have such a democratic process?
A good CEO doesn’t make every decision on his own, he consults with other senior people in the company and gets their input. Why would I not want to listen to my assistant coaches and senior players like John and Victor [Matfield]? They all have something to offer. But the final decision on how we play rests with me.
There’s a rumour going around that Dick Muir made those controversial substitutions against the Lions in the first Test in Durban. True or false?
Let me explain. My voice isn’t suited to the radio we use [to communicate with the staff on the sideline] as I talk too quickly and my voice goes high and then low. Why would I want to talk when I can make use of Dick’s strong voice?
But does the message to make the substitutions come from you?
Yes.
So why did you make all those changes when the Boks were 19 points ahead and in complete control?
You know, if I could have done it over again, I would have made them earlier, because I could see the guys were getting tired and went into a defensive mode. By the time I brought the fresh legs on we couldn’t get out of that defensive mode.
Smit believes the Boks would have won by 25 points if those changes had not been made.
No, I don’t agree with him.
Do you regret the way you handled the Schalk Burger ‘eye-gouging’ episode after the second Lions Test in Pretoria?
No, I don’t.
Why didn’t you just tell the British and Irish journalists at the post-match press conference that you couldn’t comment until you had watched the video? In the end, Smit had to step in and say that.
Why should I have had to do that? The South African journalists in the room should have asked me what it was like to have beaten the Lions in a series. But you sat back and let them ask me those questions [about Burger]. You wanted to see me fail.
But you could have stopped their line of questioning yourself. Why rely on the local media?
No, you should have stopped them. You were all intimidated by them. I saw the look in your faces.
So you have no regrets at all about that press conference and the following one on the Monday?
I regret confusing the words ‘condone’ and ‘condemn’. If I had spoken to [the foreign media] in Afrikaans, I would have won that battle easily.
Then why didn’t you?
No, why man? I just got one word wrong.
Were you given a dressing down at that meeting with SA Rugby after the Lions series?
No, it was just a meeting to discuss the progress of the team. We had a similar meeting at the end of last year.
But you seemed to choose your words far more carefully at press conferences after that meeting. You were a changed man during the Tri-Nations.
I didn’t change. You [the media] changed because we were winning. I will never change. That’s why I say ‘I am who I am and I don’t give a damn’.
Why do you think the South African rugby media want you to fail?
Because your man didn’t get the job.
Who? Heyneke Meyer?
You said it, not me.
Do you think some of the media are racist?
You said it, not me.
Do they irritate you during press conferences?
I know that most of them have played rugby before, but I can tell by their questions that they haven’t played at a very high level. If it hadn’t been for apartheid, I would have played for the Boks.
Let’s go back to the beginning of your stint as Bok coach on the day you got the job. How did you feel when [Saru president] Regan Hoskins said your appointment was ‘not for purely rugby reasons’?
I don’t let the bad things in life affect me.
But how did you feel when you heard those words?
I felt nothing. Regan is entitled to his opinion and it didn’t bother me at all. I know I’m a good coach and that I deserve to be where I am today.
The Boks finished last in the 2008 Tri-Nations after starting the tournament as favourites. Why did you choose to abandon a structured approach for a more expansive one?
What laws were we playing under? We had to adapt our game because of the ELVs. I never said that I didn’t like structure, I said we would play total rugby. When I got the job as coach I said I wanted to take the Boks to the next level.
So you don’t regret adopting the game plan used last year?
No.
Then why the return to a more structured game plan in this year’s Tri-Nations if total rugby was the way to go?
The message came from me that we should kick more this year. Then because we had kicked so much [in the three home Tri-Nations Tests], we were able to surprise the Wallabies in Perth with a running game that resulted in four tries.
What was your lowest point of that somewhat difficult 2008 season?
The sex-tape story, which wasn’t true. I had to watch my 82-year-old mother cry.
Before you were appointed as Bok coach, there was talk that you’d pick 10 black players in the starting line-up if you got the job, yet you finished the Tri-Nations with only two black wings and a black Zimbabwean prop who wasn’t eligible when Jake White was coach. Have you failed in terms of transformation?
If a racist white guy voted for the National Party, but then changed his views after 1994, that is transformation. The Springbok team has been transformed because the colour of a player’s skin doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not going to pick black players to make up the numbers, because I will do them more harm than good.
But there were still only three players in the Bok starting XV. Isn’t that a concern?
Look, I think Adi Jacobs is the No 1 centre in the country, but he got injured and by the time he was fit Jean de Villiers and Jaque Fourie were doing well together so I couldn’t drop either of them. Ricky Januarie is an excellent scrumhalf, but I can’t drop Fourie du Preez. And Conrad Jantjes broke his leg earlier this season. We could have had six players of colour in the starting XV in different circumstances.
But you only had three which is why you were slammed by that transformation committee.
What have they done for the good of this country? What contribution have they made?
You’ve said that the Super 14 coaches are to blame for the lack of black players coming through. Do you stand by that?
Yes, they don’t think black players can make it at that level.
Would the situation be different if three of our five Super 14 coaches were black?
You said it, not me.
Do black players and coaches have to work twice as hard to get the same recognition and plaudits as their white counterparts?
Of course! I’ve had to work 10 times harder than any other white coach to get to where I am today. Why wasn’t I ever offered a coaching job at Super Rugby level?
Is there something wrong with the system when someone like Frans Ludeke, who failed dismally with the Cats/Lions, gets the Bulls job?
You said it, not me.
You have a high profile as Bok coach and earn a big salary. Has that changed you as a person?
I haven’t changed. I still live in the same house in the same area [in Paarl]. It will be hard for me to leave because I want the people in my area to be proud of the fact that they are living near the Bok coach. I still drive the same car that I had before I got the Bok job. It just needs to get me from A to B.
Do people you know expect more from you? Do they ever come and ask you for money to help them buy a car or pay off a loan?
No, do I look like a charity?
By Simon Borchardt
– This article first appeared in the November issue of SA Rugby magazine
494 Comments
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8 Dec 2009, 08:45 am
Impostor @ 447
8 Dec 2009, 09:12 am
An interview with one of the most succesful coaches in world rugby required a little more thought than that! I thought some of the questions were vulgar to say the least. PDV was not my first choice as Bok coach but then neither was Jake White at the time. Who are we after one of the most succesful seasons in Bok history to adopt this line of questioning. I would have thoguht questions regarding next season’s tactics, player conditioning, smit at 2 or 3 etc etc would have done this coach justice. There is really no rugby rationale behind the interview and it is sad day for this website and SA Rugby magazine that that it actually got published in the first place. Some respect please. Read Smit’s book on PDV. Yes they have their healthy differences but at the end of the day Smit and no doubt all the other Boks have nothing but repect for ther coach – why can’t journalists.
8 Dec 2009, 10:00 am
Interesting to note that more than 36hr since the thread was entered by Simon, there’s STILL no reaction whatsoever to the interview in ANY SA websites, i.e.: IOL Rugby, Sport 24 Rugby, Rugby 365, and SuperRugby.
All the rugby columns from Cape Argus to the Beeld, Raaport and Pretoria News hasn’t mention the existence of such a sensational interview either!
This isn’t a characteristic response usually associated with Snor’s gems
Guys, you have been pumped up and hyped by a hoax I am afraid!
8 Dec 2009, 10:05 am
Much ado about nothing! Let us all be grateful Piet
is not a guest on the BBC’s ‘HardTalk’.
8 Dec 2009, 10:08 am
@kesbok: they’ll tell you that respect is earned! Keo and his minions believe that jake white “made his mistakes, suffered because of them, sacrificed the normality of being at home when his kids eat dinner and fought incredible forces within the south african game. That jake is “an extraordinary character who negotiated the kind of social and political obstacles no other coach in world rugby can comprehend”
Now they see pdv as an impostor who has no place being a springbok coach and have thus vowed to replicate the kind of turmoil, intrusions to personal life, torture through print & dergatory environment that SARU and all these other “forces” in the game , and subject pdv to all of it because they believe saru is treating pdv with kid gloves and no springbok coach deserves kid gloves!
So from that perspective, these kind of interviews and articles are all par for the cause and if you’re bok coach you have to handle them whether you’re black or white or green!
8 Dec 2009, 10:14 am
PdV: ‘I am the boss’ and he has got his wife’s permission to say so!
8 Dec 2009, 10:46 am
Aw not this kak again! I think PdV handled a tough interview well. We should not cower about affirmative action – bring it out, let’s discuss it. PdV did fine there. SA guvment currently requires that an AA coach be seen; SARU appointthe best one they can find and he’s done OK, hasn’t he? Sure, just maybe Mullet or Meyer would have been better but maybe not. PdV’s made mistakes, what SA coach hasn’t? He needs to improve, that is clear, but most SA coaches had their hopeless moments (definitely Mullet & Meyer). Jeez, and Gwant 10 wants the Boks to have a dominant lineout & scwum and probably everything else too. It’s possible bru but think for a moment; very hard to achieve. Against Ireland we had a dominant scwum and finished second. Think bru, think.
But to squeal the race card like Malema or Terreblanche (or Snotskiet) is just as stupid as these clown. Grow up, take it on the chin, speak out, don’t cower behind race.
8 Dec 2009, 11:06 am
@husky:
There hasn’t been the slightest evidence so far that the interview actually took place.
All websites and the media included Keo’s ‘Business Day’ column are totally unaware of the PdV ‘interview’
Hold fire until the interview’s credentials are verified. that is my advice to all
8 Dec 2009, 11:21 am
@Hondo: I can assure you the interview took place, but you are welcome to confirm this with Saru. The reason no one is reporting on it now is because it appeared two months ago in SA Rugby magazine.
8 Dec 2009, 11:48 am
@Simon:
Simon
Your day will come my friend. What you sow you will reap!!!
8 Dec 2009, 12:04 pm
@wpw: Ag don’t worry about simon he was a geeky, scrawny, bespectacled little choir boy who had a girly voice and warts on his nose.
He couldn’t get into the rugby team and he wasn’t a hit with the girls either.
He was probably bullied by all and sundry (girls included).
After school he would write his “dear diary” entries telling of how unfair life had been to him.
Hence all this bitter twistedness that we see from him on this site.
8 Dec 2009, 13:52 pm
We all know its not because of skill or what ever, but to make things right because of apartheid. And it will happen again. Allaister Coetzee will prob. become the next Bok coach – eventhough he is useless. Now while all the bitching and moaning? Why playing the racist card? Surely you are a better person than that! aren’t you?
@ LANGENHOVEN: This comment is stupid to say the least. stop patronizing black people, this is a classic example of how you whites think. you make comments like this becuase you are inherently racist and when a black man accuses you of racism and prejudice towards them, you try to tell them that it is all in their minds. how stupid do you think we are. dont answer that question you may just expose your lack of brain capacity even further, you racist twit. i submit to you that dawn has more brains then you. look at all the stupid whites all over the world especially the racist ones, they look just like you!!!!! powder face!
8 Dec 2009, 14:17 pm
Biggest `mistake` the Apartheid government made was to hand over all power to the ANC.
Should have been a power sharing government.Now the ANC controls, or try to control, everything.
Well this is how it may seem to any right thinking person.Problem is that there is something more sinister going on in the world.
North American Union ( USA, Canada and Mexico )process already taking place
European Union
African Union
Asian Union
All these will combine to form a One World Government. Read British Rule.
I don`t doubt for one second that the British is more responsible for many of Africa and the world`s woes.It`s not over until it`s OVER.
This is not a Conspiracy Theory, but a fact.
So look past the ANC and Mugabe and the so called savior of America, Obama. Why is he sending more troops to the middle east? Obama is nothing but a Puppet.
Some serious questions that need to be answered.
Ok, so back to rugby then
8 Dec 2009, 14:28 pm
461@Karoolander:
what will you call the movie?
8 Dec 2009, 14:30 pm
@ashley: How the Queen got her groove back….
8 Dec 2009, 14:48 pm
463@Karoolander:
how about
“the emperor’s new groove”?
8 Dec 2009, 14:53 pm
Graeme1 , as jy klaar is daar, kom maak my tuin skoon boy
8 Dec 2009, 14:57 pm
and by boy i mean little man – cause your acting like a kid … btw i’m coloured you dom puz … go back to school & finish grade 10 .. sommer saam Malema
8 Dec 2009, 15:04 pm
457@Simon:
oooooooooooooooh
i’m important
i work for sarugby magazine!! $^%$$^$^%$
8 Dec 2009, 15:25 pm
@langenhead: i dont car if you are coloured same difference you probably vote DA also, i think you should go and wash Helen zilli’s floors, you hottie. ai man when will you free your minds from this mental enslavement brought on by the colonialists, that is if you are coloured at all, cause i get the feeling the whites on this site are becoming clever and acting black when the heat comes there way. if you are in your job because of your color than you must go and finish school because then by your own admission you are an unskilled idiot. i feel so sorry for you right now, you fake colored/white whatever you are, or want to be.
8 Dec 2009, 15:37 pm
468@graeme1:
uhm
sooooooooo
when, according to you, have someone successfully freed his mind from “mental enslavement”?
8 Dec 2009, 16:43 pm
@graeme1: @LANGENHOVEN!: this is probably the most hilarious exchange in the history of keo.
so few will witness it unfortunately as it is on a dead thread.
graeme, you a a cnut of note. stick your rhetoric right up your *** and find another saviour boykie, no one gives a **** about you and the people you think of a messiah’s prefer to be called massa’s.
*****.
8 Dec 2009, 17:18 pm
@graeme1: jeppers bra, what is the matter with you? Why come on this blog and display such ignorance and the worst thing about it you’re doing it in supposed defence of black people. From now on speak for yourself. If you feel patronised by langenhoven or anyone for that matter, make it a personal matter black people don’t need no advocates especially obtuse ones like yourself.
comment on rugby for a change, let us hear what you know about the game rather than whose @rse you would like to be president and how much vitriol you can spew at pie-in-the-sky racists.
Hao batong!
8 Dec 2009, 17:23 pm
@Pearl Rose: well that was far better than my response
he is still a cnut though.
8 Dec 2009, 17:25 pm
“you hottie” is about as racial a statement as you can get.
8 Dec 2009, 17:31 pm
There is no way Langenhoven! is Langenhoven.
So Graeme got punk’d.
8 Dec 2009, 18:07 pm
@SodaJoe: i agree with you CooldrinkJoe, Graeme1 here got ashton kutcher-ed…plus i’m suspcious of this graeme character, he seems to be a fabrication!
8 Dec 2009, 18:23 pm
@Transformation: Well in one way it’s quite funny, in another quite sad – why would anyone bother?
8 Dec 2009, 18:30 pm
Ah, the stealing of nicknames. It continues…
8 Dec 2009, 18:35 pm
@SodaJoe: don’t underestimate the depravity of those that want to see this blog disrupted and dysfunctional because their ventures haven’t panned out as they imagined. this graeme1 is a fraud created to sow division and to spark racial discord nothing else.
8 Dec 2009, 18:39 pm
@Simon:
Thanks Simon, at least we are candid at last and that’s mitigation.
In fairness, you had to mention it up front that this is not a current interview, that would help to keep perceptions.
When respectable rugby commentators such as Paul Auckford from the UK’s D Telegraph, Spiro Zavos from the Sydney’s Morning Herald, Peter Bill from Auckland’s NZ Herald and Stephen Jones from the Times all reported that the Boks were ran by 3 senior players within the squad, that tells the educated person SOMETHING about the reality of PdV’s coaching and control
Keo himself admitted so last week, hell, this is no state secret?!
8 Dec 2009, 18:39 pm
@Transformation:
I tend to agree Trans !!!
8 Dec 2009, 18:42 pm
@Hondo: “educated” you sound exactly like simon’s *** lover “nick armstrong” with his 75+ oIQ claims…
8 Dec 2009, 18:48 pm
@justrugby: the same way this new langenhoven is nothing but a mole…it’s stupid really because it is so blatant…
8 Dec 2009, 18:56 pm
@Transformation:
Well,
Educated person would have spotted the huge discrepancies in that 2 months old interview, also the educated person will conclude it’s an hoax because PdV doesn’t command the English language, so it’s merely an edited fabrication
I spotted it, you didn’t
Right?
So much so for education
8 Dec 2009, 19:00 pm
@Transformation:
Can you believe that a rugby blog can degenerate into this ?
I have met the real Langenhoven, this mole is way off base !!
8 Dec 2009, 19:02 pm
@Hondo: whatever man…keeping patting urself on the back…you think rattle off names of oversees journalists you’re all that? mnxim ha ha ha
8 Dec 2009, 19:14 pm
@Transformation:
So you turned ignorance into a profession?
I got the EOYT betting perfectly all five tests, included the spreads!
The power of education vs the brandy and coke style,,,
8 Dec 2009, 19:19 pm
@Hondo: hey mate, let’s go back to ingoring each other’s posts. i have no time for the likes of you, really.
8 Dec 2009, 22:32 pm
@Transformation:
A pleasure, really
You started it, kindly reminded!
9 Dec 2009, 08:17 am
This Hondo dude is a real cnut isn’t he?? What a prick!!!
9 Dec 2009, 08:35 am
get real ladies, and face the truth this blog is nothing but a joke anyway!!! Just proves…!! anyway i hope next time i come back here you ladies are more real and tranparent and less fakelicoius… One can only hope, if you think about it my mission is accomplished…. just really think about, really think about what i mean by that. Over and out. sorry if i came over to crass at times, sometimes it is what is needed, if you at all know what i mean….??????????
9 Dec 2009, 08:57 am
@graeme1: Cheers! Have a nice day.
9 Dec 2009, 14:22 pm
I am starting to like this guy more and more
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