Simple solution to Steyn saga
16 Aug 2010
MARK KEOHANE, in his weekly Business Day column, says Peter de Villiers should have picked up the phone months ago and spoken directly with the Bok fullback.
Frans Steyn has told South Africans he is prepared to die for his country – on a rugby field that is. Personally I’d much prefer him to want to live for his country – on a rugby field that is. Steyn wouldn’t be worth anything dead.
The Springboks are a better side with a living Steyn at fullback, although there has been little life when it comes to communication between Steyn and Springbok coach Peter de Villiers, who last week publicly questioned Paris-based Steyn’s commitment to playing for his country.
Steyn’s response was by way of the media. He said he wanted to go to the World Cup. He said he was prepared to die on a field for the Springboks. He said in an interview with Rapport newspaper that he hadn’t spoken to De Villiers since a one-off appearance against Wales in Cardiff in June. The only communication was from convener of selectors Peter Jooste a few weeks ago to tell him he would only be considered for the Boks’ Grand Slam tour in November.
Then Steyn was picked for the home Tri-Nations Tests.
Steyn said he called the Bok coach and left a voice message. He hasn’t heard from him again. While Steyn was doing his talking in one Sunday publication, De Villiers was doing his in another and had this to say about Steyn and the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand: ‘Regarding Frans, I haven’t thought that far yet.’
It was the most revealing of responses because De Villiers seems to have thought about everything else in confirming he had already identified his World Cup squad and that there would not be enough time (more than a year) to introduce new players.
De Villiers also had a few other things to say, which I’ll get to, but what I can never understand – and De Villiers is not the exception among rugby coaches – is just why it is so damn difficult for a coach to talk directly to a player.
I can only think the problem is the size of so many coach’s egos. Do they consider it beneath them to be the first to call and is it the responsibility of the player to go on two knees in asking for personal communication?
Players don’t initiate communication with coaches because players don’t select themselves, but no coach can expect loyalty from a player when that coach can’t take the time to speak to the player and uses third parties and the public forum of the media to get across the message.
De Villiers did not want Steyn in his squad, which explains why he hasn’t ‘thought that far yet’ when it comes to Steyn’s World Cup ambitions. The senior players then insisted Steyn get selected, and with De Villiers having sworn allegiance to these senior players he was compelled to reintroduce Steyn to the national squad.
Steyn, in the interim, had got hurt in a pre-season club match and did not make it to South Africa. Now there is doubt over the seriousness of the injury and De Villiers, again publicly, questioned Steyn’s desire and how much the medical opinion can be trusted.
Steyn then fired back that there had been no communication between De Villiers and himself. And so it has continues … everything gets said in the media, but nothing gets said privately.
The situation would have been resolved months ago by one phone call, and if the coach had made the effort and Steyn had still played silly buggers then make it public, but the only thing De Villiers has made public is that he refuses to talk personally to Steyn.
Ideally you’d want a coach who actually wants to talk to one of the best players in the world, but generally when it comes to De Villiers you’d want him to do less talking and more coaching, assuming that he has it in him to actually coach.
And it is an assumption that I make with little conviction after reading De Villiers’ Sunday Times interview with Simnikiwe Xabanisa. His answers lacked reflection and introspection and rugby intelligence.
‘Studying our videos, it’s mind boggling to me why we didn’t win,’ was De Villiers’ response to losing 32-12 and 31-17 to the All Blacks and 30-13 to the Wallabies.
Mindboggling is more appropriate to De Villiers’ refusal to dial a number and tell a player he either wants him in his squad or doesn’t.
What should boggle the mind though is when your teams scores four tries and concedes one and loses. And for purposes of clarity De Villiers’ team scored the one try.
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165 Comments
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16 Aug 2010, 18:31 pm
@sharks_lover(sharks_lover)-149: Saw that today Sharky. I put a post there that I would be sad to see Kockott go. Not good really losing some of our really good players like that.
Always remember that game against Stormers where Kockott played scrumhalf and Ruan at FH. Both those players were brilliant that day. Some just forget or wish to forget.
16 Aug 2010, 18:35 pm
Sharky, Cheers I am out of here for now.
16 Aug 2010, 19:09 pm
@Puma(Puma)-152: cheers bro catcha laters
email me boet
its why i seldom go to sharksworld
a sharks supporters base and hell the negativity there gets to me
16 Aug 2010, 20:22 pm
Francois Steyn, Benni MacCarthy, Clide rathbone. Almal D,,,se.
16 Aug 2010, 21:40 pm
Frans Steyn has such a big boot the opponents are forced to play at least one of their back three (wings and fullback) ten metres further back than what would be their “normal” field position, making a counter-attack a lot harder to launch from so disconnected a location.
No other fullback forces his opponents to do that.
But PDivvy insists on playing out his own petty vendetta…
It’s about what you’d expect from an AA pseudo-coach.
16 Aug 2010, 23:17 pm
@TheTackler(TheTackler)-155: Clutching at straws, boet. You could also reason that the extra distance that he gets on his kicks makes it more difficult for the chasers to apply pressure on the receiver, thus giving the defending players more time to either kick, launch a counter attack or set up phases and keep posession.
16 Aug 2010, 23:38 pm
Peter de Villiers is a clown
a d.o.o.s
an idiot of the highest degree
Nothing he says or does suprises me
to the contrary its expected
17 Aug 2010, 00:53 am
@Couchcoach(GI POT)-156: The chasers may have 10m further to run, but a speedy winger in full stride running straight covers 10m in about one second.
A defender, having to turn around and, from a dead standstill, then rush back to retrieve a FS overhead bomb, needs ten times as long.
Who holds all the aces?
17 Aug 2010, 02:49 am
Having trawled through many of these comments, I’m staggered that SA rugby – and SA rugby supporters – cannot appreciate that, in a professional era, players have the right to ply their trade wherever they so wish WITHOUT being isolated because of it.
Rugby, particularly SA rugby, has never quite understood the move to professionalism. It has failed to embrace the concept (barring the administrators, who can’t seem to get to the feeding trough quick enough)and consigns us to some hybrid middle ground between true professional sport and ther ox-wagon mentaltity that characterised the amateur era and was littered with brown paper bags, degrees for idiots at Stellenbosch University and cushy military call-ups to Cape Town or Pretoria for talented youngsters.
Just as Brazilian footballers playing in Serie A or La Liga should never be excluded from consideration for the Brazilian national football side, so no All Black, Wallaby or Bok (ar any other player, for that matter) should be excluded from consideration for the national side.
I say let’s move forward, 100%. Let’s pick the best players for the Boks, period. That should be the only criteria.
And God knows we need every bit of talent we can lay our hands on.
But then again, we’re talking about South Africa, who single-handedly are making a magnificent feast of turning themselves into the laughing stock of world rugby.
Very sad.
17 Aug 2010, 02:56 am
@Joe Maher(Joe Maher)-159:
Joe, slightly off topic but still on clowns at least…I see the chewing clown is predicting a 5 zip whitewash in the upcoming Ashes. Apparently they only just missed out due to circumstances outside his control on the previous occassion…
By the way, did keo do away with the cricket blog or am I just to stoopid to find the link?
17 Aug 2010, 04:47 am
Steyn is a wonderful prospect for South Africa and from what Keo is telling us he most definitely is not being handled correctly.
Pros are prima donnas and require kid gloves, they also require a straight talking coach who is willing to stroke the kids ego when needed and to bench them when a kick up the ar$e is in order.
BUT! the problem is Steyn is not locally contracted, he is technically off the radar. Why is he not left to develop his game and in his own time to return for selection. This may only be for WCup selection/training. If he slots in then well and good and if not. Thank you Frans, cya next time. FFS the kid has went offshore to grow and all the media and SARU do is drag him down.
NZ said goodbye to Hayman, they wished him well. I am sure if he felt he wanted another tilt at the WCup he would have gone out of his way to be available. He has not and the NZ media have not lambasted him, they tried to lure him to no avail. They wished him well.
Good luck Frans, I wish you well.
17 Aug 2010, 08:05 am
P Div is a complete joke.
The All Blacks were training at Morningside gyme yesterday, a pool session, every one of them is ripped, strong and fit.
P Div and his circus have not only allowed our team to get fat, they are lazy and not up to the same standard as the All Blacks.
PDiv’s inability to speak coherently has probably got a lot to do with why relationships are strained with Steyn. He probably did call but Francois couldn’t understand why a helium clown was doing a prank call on him.
PDiv = *** beard.
17 Aug 2010, 11:22 am
Dom Frans can’t be completely innocent in the whole affair. Unfortunately every one is on PdV’s case, maybe rightly so. Reality is that Dom Frans is also a windgat hothead and unfortunately we still do not know what lead to the big fall-out. I’ll bet that the whole issue is ego-based. I just hope that if Dom Frans gets his oppertunity again that he will act the part. Monty was a good example, he became a prick and after a couple of seasons in the cold came back as a better team player. Dom Frans can learn from this.
18 Aug 2010, 00:59 am
Fran Styen does the right thing, almost following my advice to the letter:
Disassociates himself from PdV the drunken clown and his honchos, let the Jantejes and the Kirchners be picked at 15.
FS – or his agent/advisor for that matter – plays that game with skill, he knows the Boks’ 15 jersey is pegged for a quota no matter what, so why bother, why get humiliated un necessarily?
The fact thgat most here did believe that PdV contacted FS last week attests to the naivity of the bloggers here on this site
18 Aug 2010, 14:08 pm
Totally farking pathetic PdV.
FSteyn holds one of the keys to inspiring our players and raising our game. He just raises the level that bit more that no-one else can do.
I cannot comprehend how totally stupid FdV is to not have seen that from the beginning. What a moron for thinking he can just get by without these keys. FDuPreez is another … but PdV thought the team will just ‘magically’ adapt without them.
How stupid.
Further is his rediculous comment that Frans’s intensity is not matched to SA international team as he’s been playing in NH … how THICK is that? Newsflash PdV … Frans’s intensity at 50% is more than the lame-arse Bok dynasaurs currently huffing & puffing.
McDonalds anyone?
He’s probably thinking the next game will be a typical Kiwi/Bok event in SA … so wrong. AB’s are really going to put pressure on this first game to get their win.
PdV = IDIOT
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