Pulling the strings
15 Jul 2010
Springbok assistant coaches Gary Gold and Dick Muir have had a major influence on the team’s playing philosophy, writes Gavin Rich in SA Rugby magazine.
In the movie Robin Hood, the hero plays a defining role in the battle that enables the English to beat off an intended French invasion.
The English monarch, King John, seeing the French surrender, asks who they are surrendering to. One of John’s right-hand men points at the Robin Longstride (later to become Hood) character, played by Russell Crowe, and says, ‘They are surrendering to him’.
No doubt the king is aware of the role that Robin has played in saving England, but at the same time he is jealous of his popularity. He reacts by declaring Robin an outlaw of the state.
Why are we starting off a story about the Springbok assistant coaches by retelling a Hollywood screenplay? Because there may be a little of King John in Springbok coach Peter de Villiers. His public tirade against his management team in April could only have been sparked by dissatisfaction that others were being credited with the Springboks’ success.
In the end, the coach’s threat to sack staff never amounted to anything, and the same management team that ended the last international season were working with De Villiers when the Springboks started the new one.
What De Villiers was doing, or so it emerged, was just blowing off steam, doing a bit of sabre rattling to warn his management members while at the same time sending out the message to the public that he is the boss.
To understand why there would be a need to do that you have to understand that like all of us, De Villiers is human. That means he does have an ego, and while publicly he did all the right things last year by staying in the background when the players celebrated the Tri-Nations triumph, privately it must rankle with him that he didn’t get full credit from some sections of the media and public.
That the Springbok team is run by committee should be obvious to anyone who has read John Smit’s autobiography. It should have been clear to anyone who understands the game that the Springboks did not achieve their success against the British & Irish Lions and in the Tri-Nations playing the off-the-cuff rugby that De Villiers spoke about when he first took over.
Behind the scenes a long battle was being waged in 2008 to get the Boks back to the game that won the World Cup just a year earlier. The players were part of that battle, but the assistant coaches were also facing each other across the trenches, with the different philosophies of Dick Muir and Gary Gold having an impact on the initial formulation of policy, as well as the evolution that followed.
To explain all of this, it is instructive to go back to the article I wrote on the assistant coaches for SA Rugby magazine in May 2008. At the time they were being appointed, they were clearly not being recruited as assistants who would just follow the head coach’s policy, but would be part of policy formulation.
The problem was that even back then they knew they had conflicting views on how the game should be played, though they tried hard to make it seem like a positive.
‘I know Peter’s style from his time with Western Province [he coached the Disas], and obviously I know Dick from what he has done with the Sharks, and I would say that in a subtle way we do have different philosophies,’ said Gold. ‘Neither philosophy is right or wrong, but while I believe there should be some structure, I think Peter and Dick are what you could call “heads-up coaches”. They like their players to play what’s in front of them.’
Gold went on to say that Muir probably wouldn’t disagree that it was only when John Plumtree arrived as his assistant that structure was brought to the Sharks in 2007, and it was then that the Sharks evolved into the finished article. Gold was right, Muir didn’t disagree.
‘It’s about striking the right balance between structure and letting the players make the decisions, and I think your ability to get this right depends heavily on where you are with the players in their development,’ said Muir. ‘Looking back, I think that in a manner of speaking I was trying to run with players who at the time just weren’t ready to run. I firmly believe that if you have the complete product, in other words players who are experienced and developed enough, you don’t need structure.’
That Muir statement explains a lot. Clearly when he became involved with the Springboks, he thought the players were the finished article. Let’s wind the clock back to the first Springbok training camp under the De Villiers regime in Stellenbosch in late May 2008.
The Sharks had made the Super 14 semi-finals, so they weren’t part of the Bok squad at first muster. Muir wasn’t part of the management that first addressed the players at the Lord Charles Hotel in Somerset West.
Perhaps it explains why when the Boks went into their first training sessions, structure was not just a small feature of what they were doing – it was massive.
I watched one of those sessions with Brendan Venter, who was the Stormers defence coach at the time and is now in charge of Saracens. Venter was open mouthed at what he was seeing, and exclaimed that the structured session he was watching was the antithesis of the heads-up approach that De Villiers had been preaching in the media.
Venter was even more confounded when he heard some of the regular Stormers codes being called out, and saw the Springboks running Stormers drills and moves. Stormers coach Rassie Erasmus was also watching from the stands at the Danie Craven Stadium.
Understandably, Gold became unpopular with Erasmus for a while, and he was also in hot water with De Villiers when I wrote in the Weekend Argus that the Springboks were employing Stormers strategy. I know this because Venter, a good friend of Gold’s, told me as much.
But Venter wasn’t the only person I chatted to during that Stellenbosch camp. The players were more talkative in those early days about the De Villiers reign, and one of them told me towards the end of the camp that everything had been well on track and the squad had been heading towards a structured approach before Muir arrived and, in his words, ‘messed it up’.
The Boks continued with what they started, however, when they played the first game under De Villiers against Wales in Bloemfontein. For the first 50 minutes it was text-book traditional Bok rugby, with Butch James playing one of his better games of that year. The Boks won comfortably.
Unfortunately, though, they scored a couple of long-range tries once the Welsh were forced into a massive catch-up game in the second half, and this must have duped De Villiers into leaning back in the direction of the Muir heads-up approach. We media probably didn’t help when, in praising the Boks the next day, we noted that little had changed in overall strategy since the World Cup.
It was heads-up rugby that the Boks played in the early part of the Loftus game, only the heads were clearly missing – it looked like chicken-without-heads rugby. The Boks won in the end, but they nearly ran themselves out on their feet, and the Welsh were allowed to be far more competitive than they had been in Bloemfontein.
This pattern of doing well with structure one week and then forsaking it with near disastrous results was to continue for much of the season. For instance, the overly frenetic approach of Wellington was followed by a more controlled and structured approach in Dunedin, and the Boks scored a historic victory.
But instead of going to Australia retaining the same approach, the Boks telegraphed an intention to become more attacking by dropping Percy Montgomery. The Boks lost in Perth, and they lost 19-0 to the All Blacks at Newlands playing rugby that was a long way from the tried and trusted Bok template.
And so to Durban, and the match against the Wallabies, where the chasm in the camp in terms of the intended approach was made obvious to the media by the massive differences in the utterances of the players, the two assistants and the head coach.
At the media conferences during the week, Jean de Villiers spoke about the need to play from the right positions on the field and to kick when on the wrong side of halfway, and Juan Smith spoke about the virtues of structure. So did Gold. But when Muir spoke he was clearly speaking heads-up rugby again, and he and De Villiers seemed convinced there had not been any error with the strategy in the Newlands disaster.
Behind the scenes a meeting had taken place, at the behest of the assistant coaches, between players and management at which a new way forward was formulated. Under pressure, De Villiers was forced to let the players have their way – but judging from his and Muir’s statements, they didn’t know what that way was.
The return to structure didn’t bear immediate dividends in Durban because some 50-50 calls went against the Boks early on. When they fell behind they lost composure, and it was clear not all the players were on the same page. Neither were the coaches, for The Mercury reported afterwards that two different strategies were suggested to skipper Victor Matfield by the respective assistant coaches at half-time.
History shows that a return to direct rugby saw the Boks score a massive win over the Wallabies in Johannesburg in the final Test of that Tri-Nations, and but for a slight wobble in Edinburgh, the template was retained for the end-of-year tour and into 2009.
Of the two assistants, Gold played the more important role in the success of the new player-driven culture because his understanding of the need for a structured approach led him to act as an interface between the players and the other coaches.
Percy Montgomery, when he was with the Boks last year, also played a massive role in preaching structure, and in the Tri-Nations he played a bigger role than merely performing the duties of a kicking coach.
The reality is that strategy within the Springbok set-up has never really been driven by De Villiers – there have been occasions, such as in the beginning in Stellenbosch, when Gold was clearly allowed to have influence. There were other times when Muir had more influence, usually coinciding with a heads-up playing style, and of course, over the past 18 months the players have been steering the ship.
But the senior players cannot be fall guys because they are seen as indispensible. The assistants may be more expendable to De Villiers, which explains why it was management who were in the line of fire when he thrust out his chest and proclaimed ‘I am the boss!’ That was what De Villiers’ media outburst was about.
In order to do so, he had to find a suitable fall guy, and his fellow management were easy targets.
By Gavin Rich
– This article first appeared in the July issue of SA Rugby magazine
218 Comments
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15 Jul 2010, 11:26 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-37: Idiot…what Springbok team have you been watching for the last two and half years? If that’s regression, let’s hope they keep reversing all the way to the top.
15 Jul 2010, 11:28 am
I am basing him on his performances. Everyone in the know knew that last years limited tactics were done to mask flaws in the Boks game, it worked in the short term, but everyone wityh the slightest savvy warned that it could never last for long. All you de Villiers groupies who refuse to see any wrong in him were emphatically proven wrong on the EOYT abd now the TNs. But no matter what happens you’ll only ever see de Villiers as a victom… but not the victom of his own ineptitude.
15 Jul 2010, 11:29 am
I like the opening of this article.
Much like the movie the plot of this article is a bit weak and it certainly falls into the category of science fiction unlike the true events that took place in history of the time (much like what is happening now and the topic in question being Bok rugby and PDV).
It (story about the Boks and PDV) also has a strangely familiar feeling to Robin Hood in which the plot of the story or details have changed over years of story-telling each time trying a new angle to make the same point (but still not really nailing it down) relying more on conjecture than fact.
Reminds me of the treintjie game we used to play in pre-school.
15 Jul 2010, 11:31 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-52:
Ah sounds like all those guys that said the PDV groupies will be proved wrong in the B&I Lions series where they will not win a match, in the 3N where they will not win a match, how they will never beat Aus or NZ away, how they will get hammered against Wales this year…
The PDV prophets of doom cannot wait for one test loss to remind everyone again how this is the end of Bok rugby.
Must be ******* excrutiating for you guys since there are not that many losses.
15 Jul 2010, 11:31 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-49: Did you sent Rich your full scale detailed analysit of PdV? He still does not believe that PdV is running that WC winning team into the ground. He blieves that it is Gold together with the senior players that is responsible for the deterioration in the quality of SA’s play. I implore you to please send him your full scale detailed anlysis ASAP.
15 Jul 2010, 11:32 am
Gary Gold you bloody agent…
15 Jul 2010, 11:33 am
@John1976(John1976)-55:
We still did not get that analysis?
Ag **** why do I waste my time on this thread then.
I am off.
15 Jul 2010, 11:33 am
@Faust(Faust)-39: Morning Faust, hope all is well on your side.
Eish, that is a tough one. There are so many variables at play.
I guess the one thing we know for sure is that FDP left a massive hole in our team. However, his absence is also a blessing in disguise as it forces the Bok management to think wider than the parameters that it is used to. We have to be prepared for a FDP-less WC in 2011, like we need to be prepared for a Matfield-less WC too for instance.
Morne is obviously more familiar with Olivier on his outside, and with the absence of a familiar pass on his inside, perhaps picking Olivier ahead of JDV makes a lot of sense.
Personally I prefer JDV at 12, but I don’t think his presence there would have made a big difference on Saturday. Our defensive problems were not of a man-on-man problem, but rather poor organisation around the rucks and the allocation of inappropriate numbers at specific collision points. We allowed them far too quick ruck ball on their offense.
It is tough to signal out specific individuals here, but our loose trio and front row needed to be a lot more industrious as a unit.
Another thing I’ve noticed from the June internationals that the ABs also picked up is that we are particularly vulnerable on the blindside as the phase play progress.
15 Jul 2010, 11:34 am
What I find unbelievable is that ALL our victories in 2008 are attributed to this mysterious “structure”. I certainly remember the 19-0 loss in CPT. The fact is we played a structured kicking game, but our trio of F Steyn, FDP and Percy were all extremely poor. Missing touch, kicking over the deadball line and missing goal kicks. It was all there. Matfield also got on Goddard’s wrong side and we were blown off park. We certainly played with less structure in the massive Ellis Park and Twickenham victories later that year.
Gavin Rich has always had it against PDV. It took just one loss (Wellington) for him to proclaim publicly that PDV was out of his depth, and that the players were running the show. D o o s!
15 Jul 2010, 11:34 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-49: Most of those players were selected by Jake White to begin with.
Our defense was brilliant last year and for most of the season so far. We had a bad day at the office this past Saturday because we adopted a drift defense pattern – I will put my head on a block that this is Muir’s influence.
15 Jul 2010, 11:35 am
Whatever, but all will be revealed, the problem with living in a dream world is that you have to wake-up one day. And when it does you all will be seeing things as they really are.
15 Jul 2010, 11:37 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-61:
I already see you for what you really are.
15 Jul 2010, 11:37 am
@King Shaka(zulu shark)-59:
Actually we only played a structured game twice. In the second and last test. In the 19-0 loss the Boks were running it like headless chickens. Against England we played a highly structured counter attacking game, so you are again wrong.
15 Jul 2010, 11:38 am
@Dawn(Dawn)-62:
And I see you for what you really are too. A person who will pull the race card and defend someone because of their skin colour can only be one thing, as is so often the case with these people.
15 Jul 2010, 11:39 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-61:
All will be revealed?
Are you doing a revision on your detailed analysis?
I have seen this bullshit played out before since 2005 when Jake White was the cancer in SA Rugby…
Since then I have seen many guys come and go.
Hopefully you will have the persistance of Skopskiet.
15 Jul 2010, 11:39 am
Gary Gold, made a light five of the Stormers tight five…say no more…
15 Jul 2010, 11:40 am
you gotta love this, ‘pulling the strings’ robin hood and his bow & arrow, the senior players being puppeteers, nice one gavin.
15 Jul 2010, 11:40 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-64:
Says the guy who refers to fellow South Africans as ‘these people’
******* rich china.
15 Jul 2010, 11:40 am
And yet Gary Gold was USELESS when he coached at WP.
Pull the other one Gavin!!
15 Jul 2010, 11:40 am
@Transformation(Transformation)-67:
Well at least he makes bullshit more entertaining these days!
15 Jul 2010, 11:42 am
@PissAnt(PissAnt)-68:
I refer to racists as “these people”. I think ‘m being very generous in my description of race card fanatics.
15 Jul 2010, 11:42 am
ahhh
the fringe right wing network has arrived
15 Jul 2010, 11:43 am
@Transformation(Transformation)-67: i know
i almost fell off my chair when i read it
the hollywood analogy’s were too much
15 Jul 2010, 11:43 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-49:
the previous White coach would have never picked Brussow (new part) and has said so on national TV… PdV let Frans settle at fullback (fine tuned) and he won the 3N in New Zealnd for us…
so no… i am not wrong… but you can spin your top however you like… cherry pick whatever facts suit your agenda…
but as they say… look at the scoreboard… ALL the facts add up to a win-loss record…
where does PdV stack up in the list of win-loss records with all the previous coaches…
that is what counts and where you argument fails…
15 Jul 2010, 11:44 am
@PissAnt(PissAnt)-65:
I’ll be here alright. And referring to the Bok coach who resurrected Bok rugby a cancer? 2005 being a very succesful year too. But you’ll laud a coach who has regressed what Jake left behind? It doesn’t make any sense.
15 Jul 2010, 11:44 am
@wpw(wpw)-69: He can’t multitask…
15 Jul 2010, 11:46 am
Keyword: STRUCTURE.
15 Jul 2010, 11:46 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-63: Your recollection of the Newlands test is inaccurate. King Sharks has rightly pointed out that the leather was kick off the ball that day by SA. The kicking out hand by FdP, Butch and Percy were atrocious and they never attempted to run the ball from within their own half. Either you did not watch the match or you are trying to mislead the bloggers deliberately.
15 Jul 2010, 11:47 am
Gavin Rich is becoming the Bill O’Reilly of Keo.co.za and SA Rugby mag.
15 Jul 2010, 11:48 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-63:
Had Ricky not produced that piece of magic in Dunedin then the likes of you would’ve blamed “lack of structure” for the loss.
FFS at Ellis Park we hardly played percentage rugby. We ran it at will and our ball runners were causing havoc. We used the EXACT gameplan we’d used in Durban the week before. It’s just that our passes stuck and we hardly made any mistakes on attack.
15 Jul 2010, 11:49 am
@King Shaka(zulu shark)-59: don’t forget butch at flyhalf, he fcuked up royally, his line kicking was sh*t. Look you can play structure and lose 49-0, you can play structure and NEVER win a game in new zealand, you can play structure and come last in the tri-nations for 3 years running, structure is no guarantee for success.
15 Jul 2010, 11:50 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-71:
so you’re a “these people”…???
15 Jul 2010, 11:50 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-75:
Perhaps you did not read properly.
I saw this bullshit play out before, where Jake was called a cancer in SA Rugby same as PDV is now…
And please, please be so kind as to indicate exactly how this team has ‘regressed’ under PDV.
Please!
Use any measurable means and tool at your disposal to illustrate this.
I will be absolutely fascinated.
15 Jul 2010, 11:51 am
href=”#comment-1657877″>ufo(ufo)-74:
Frans is our best 12, LOL. Jake never needed a fetcher, his approach of rucking blunted the much vaunted prowess of Australia and New Zealand. And plus, 2009 were under different rules.
What’s interesting to note is that I can discuss aspects of the game, selections, tactics, I can quote these coaches on their thinking and beliefs, but all I get in response is,
“Your racist!”
“Look at the scoreboard”
“de Villiers is the Zeus of rugby, end of discussion”
Nothing tangible, nothing in depth, just little sissy girl rants or garbled, incorrect information. Yet I am the one is is wrong? LMAO. It doesn’t say much for these fools.
15 Jul 2010, 11:52 am
@PissAnt(PissAnt)-54: LOL
tht really made me laugh
15 Jul 2010, 11:52 am
Ag **** what am I saying.
I am asking this of a guy who has apparently composed a detailed analysis (only he has ever seen) on how kak PDV is.
I am out of here.
15 Jul 2010, 11:53 am
@King Shaka(zulu shark)-80:
Actually I said we were quite lucky to win that test. We were never really going to win it until Januarie had that burst and scored. It was a great piece of individual brilliance, but masked defficiencies in our game, those were my words,.
15 Jul 2010, 11:53 am
@PissAnt(PissAnt)-83: It is all in his “full scale detailed analysis”. It is on the Supersport website in 3000 posts.
15 Jul 2010, 11:53 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-75: Another one who is blinded by the legacy of a WC win against mediocre opposition.
On a serious note, who are all these buggers who voted for Januarie to start on Saturday. I know Dawn is one, but can there be so many NZ supporters who visit this site?
15 Jul 2010, 11:56 am
@John1976(John1976)-78:
He’s obviously talking nonsense. FDP kicked several balls over our deadball. Percy was playing his 100th and was overawed by the occasion. The only example of “headless chicken” rugby was late in 2nd half when we were trailing. This culminated in that JDV/Steyn quick throw-in which was intercepted for the last try.
15 Jul 2010, 11:56 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-49: You sad, sad loser. So when a good player gets selected its because it was forced on the coach, and when a player isn’t quite up to Test level, that’s the coaches pick? What a bufoon!
The defence was outstanding last year, and we dominated the lineouts, especially against New Zealand – why don’t you rather keep quiet and save yourself the humiliation.
Here are some facts for your “full scale analysis”. Boks under Div: played 30, won 21, 70% win ratio is best for any coach with 30 Tests or more post-isolation, Tri-Nations champions, NZ whitewash, including first ever win at Carisbrooke, Lions series winners, 2008 first Bok side to go unbeaten on end of year tour in 10 years.
Those are the FACTS…do you have any?
15 Jul 2010, 11:57 am
sharks team for saturday
15. Louis Ludik
14. JP Pietersen
13. Stefan Terblanche (Capt)
12. Patrick Lambie
11. Lwazi Mvovo
10. Steve Meyer
9. Charl McLeod
8. Keegan Daniel
7. Michael Rhodes
6. Jacques Botes
5. Alistair Hargreaves
4. Steven Sykes
3. Wiehahn Herbst
2. Craig Burden
1. Patric Cilliers
Replacements
16. Kyle Cooper
17. Eugene van Staden
18. Ross Skeate
19. Skholiwe Ndlovu
20. Rory Kockott
21. Monty Dumond
22. Andries Strauss
15 Jul 2010, 11:57 am
@GI POT(GI POT)-89: The real question is why is so many people voting for Hougaard?
15 Jul 2010, 11:57 am
@PissAnt(PissAnt)-83:
Look at our leaky defence, look at our woeful attack, the counter attacking brilliance of the team is dead. All there is is Du Preez’s boot, he is gone and the whole team falls apart. Even with far less depth, we were never so reliant on a single player a we are now, Hoping that the boot of Du Preez will save us. The tactics are flawed. Take last Saturdays game, New Zealand made sure that they approached the breakdown with an organized approach, reacting to the new laws. de Villiers thinks that the old tactics of last year will still work even though his belief was proven wrong. And he intends to do the same this week. So many flaws, so many problems. But SAns are the only ones who can’t see it. There’s a reason why de Villiers is not respected by anyone in world rugby.
15 Jul 2010, 11:58 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-84: i’m nt sure most people are of the opinion that he is the Zeus of rugby, in their hearts
what ppl cant stand though is the continual undermining of some1 who despite “the majority of rugby fans ” against his pick, has produced very impressive results
why the talk of quota coach and such
no 1 referred to graham henry as such when he was given a whitewash last year
15 Jul 2010, 11:59 am
@Alucard(Alucard)-84:
I never said jake white needed a fetcher… he has two sons… but he said he wouldn’t have picked Brussow last year… but again you spin so fast you don’t stop to think…
yah whatever dude…
you’re the king of clever… the pharaoh of facts… the taj of tactics… the royal of rugby…
bottom line dude…
you’re a “these people”
15 Jul 2010, 12:01 pm
de Villiers never wanted Morne. He had every intention of playing Pienaar, then Rose. But when the wheels came off, he was under pressure to do so. Till this very day, de Villiers refuses to acknowledge Morne’s achievements. Whenm asked, he just said Pienaar is the best 10 in SA, nothing about Morne.
As for Brussow, Plumtree advised that he ne selected. But even though Brussow was succesful de Villiers tried repeatedly to get Rossouw into the position, but it never worked.
So you are wrong AGAIN.
I did credit de Villiers for Beast though. So I did give him his dues.
15 Jul 2010, 12:01 pm
@Alucard(Alucard)-87: its soo disappointing when one loses and romance abt..if this had happened , if the ball had bounced more favourably
it is even more disconcerting when after winning, the winning supporters say, oh we should have lost because if this had happened, if the ball had bounced tht way
you are areal chop and not a true supporter
GET OUT YOU BLADDY AGENT
15 Jul 2010, 12:02 pm
@Alucard(Alucard)-87:
Yet you say in post 63 that we played “structured” rugby in that test, and implying that to be the reason for the win. You didn’t say anything about being lucky.
15 Jul 2010, 12:03 pm
@John1976(John1976)-93: Yes, you’re right. There is a lot of provincial sentiment on this site. Pienaar should be the obvious replacement, not so?
I guess it all depends on where your sentiments lie
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