Consultants will instill culture of excellence
3 May 2011
JON CARDINELLI says that Rassie Erasmus and Derik Coetzee will provide the Springboks with what they’ve been lacking over the past three seasons.
Erasmus and Coetzee were on Monday named as coaching consultants to the Boks as the squad began the final stage of their World Cup preparations. Erasmus has been contracted to help with the technical areas of the game, while Coetzee has been brought in to improve the players’ conditioning.
These appointments are overdue. The 2010 Test season showed the Boks to be inadequate in both areas. Not only were they technically out-manoeuvred by their Australasian counterparts, but some of their players were well short of the conditioning requirements of a top-flight athlete.
The Boks failed to build on the outstanding performances of the Bulls and Stormers in the 2010 Super 14. South Africa’s premier sides had not only won through to the final, but also exhibited a great understanding and appreciation for the revised laws.
It seemed crazy that the Boks were unable to follow suit even though they boasted many of those self-same Bulls and Stormers players. It said much for the way the national team was coached.
The good news is that there’s still hope for the Boks, and perhaps Peter de Villiers has finally reached the stage where he can put the interests of South African rugby ahead of his own personal pride.
He made a joke of the fact on Monday when he said it had taken him three years to realise that a professional media manager was needed to facilitate a relationship with reporters, a joke that served as a precursor to his explanation for appointing Erasmus and Coetzee.
Both men are well known to the senior Bok players. Eddie Jones went to the 2007 World Cup as the Boks’ technical adviser, and while he received due credit after the successful campaign, men like captain John Smit were also quick to laud Erasmus’s contributions.
Erasmus commanded respect back in 2007, and he will command even more respect of the grizzled Bok senior players in 2011.
His first stint with the Boks was on the back of three years with the Cheetahs, who managed to win two Currie Cup titles while Erasmus was at the helm. He has since moulded the Stormers into a competitive and feared unit, and while there may be no silverware to show for it, his reputation as one of world rugby’s best technical minds has been greatly enhanced.
To paraphrase Smit, Erasmus has the energy and technical know-how, and for those reasons, he’s exactly what the Boks need. Areas like the lineout and the breakdown are his expertise, and we can expect a notable improvement in both facets of a play.
Coetzee’s input should also prove invaluable. In 2010, Bok conditioning coach Neels Liebel told the media that John Smit and Ricky Januarie weren’t overweight, which was a lie in the same class as the one told to the emperor in The Emperor’s New Clothes. Smit and Januarie were too fat by far, and to say anything to the contrary was to insult the public’s intelligence.
Smit has done his best to shed the extra kilos but there’s more to conditioning than reaching your goal weight. Coetzee had the Boks of 2007 on a special programme that prepared them to peak at the tournament itself, and although he will complain about the short-time frame ahead of the coming showpiece in New Zealand, he will devise a way to lift the current standards.
These are appointments that should have been made at an earlier date, but are nevertheless appointments that will aid the Boks’ World Cup cause. And while it has taken De Villiers all of three years to admit that he needs help, rather he admit the fact now than never.
8 Comments
3 May 2011, 06:09 am
thank heavens Rassie is there
3 May 2011, 06:18 am
Derik knows his stuff and he can make them peak at whatever time is needed, it will however include going back to some basic fitness training, breaking them down so to speak and then building them up again. This is all good and he can do it, just don’t expect any miracles during this whole process.
This will include the 3N…be warned!
3 May 2011, 08:44 am
“While there may be no silverware to show for it”….um, thats not a minor dtail that one can quickly gleam over. Love him or hate him PDV has more silverware than Rassie Erasmus and I don’t understand where this sudden praise of him is coming from. But I suppose thats the South African way, find a hero asap just so that when he fails (as expected due to him being a lot more average than we made him out to be) we have a scapegoat…from players to coaches. rassie is good but hes not that great and those Cheetahs of his never stepped it up in the super 14 which is the gauge I use, not currie cup. And as for 2007, every tom **** and harry could see those running patterns being run by the Boks had Eddie Jones written all over them. My question is, if the Boks are successful will PDV be given credit or will the victories be that of the consultants…keeping in mind jake White happily accepted the credit for 2007 when clearly we were on a hiding to nothing coming from one of our worst tri nations campaigns in history before Eddie contributed SIGNIFICANTLY
3 May 2011, 09:33 am
@flanka(flanka)-3: Oh don’t be an old sour prune.
WP last won the Currie cup in 2001, and was in a S14 semi in 2004.
Last year they played in the S15 final and the Currie Cup final. Is that not an improvement? Nobody is gleaming over any details, the people in the Cape are very aware that they haven’t won anything. But the rest of SA are so busy shouting “no silverware no silverware” that they refuse to give ANY credit to a team that is at least playing better rugby and competing against the best.
People are more willing to give credit to the Cheetahs and Lions than the Stormers, how crazy is that.
3 May 2011, 11:56 am
@Slartibartfast(Slartibartfast)-2: “Basic fitness training” sounds so much like Kamp Staaldraad!
Kitch Christie’s Boks were the fittest in the tournament. England 2003 were the fittest as well. Even if you consider the fitness training the SA soccer team did before the SWC showed what an improvement can be made with superior fitness training.
3 May 2011, 13:43 pm
While I have a lot of respect for Rassie, I dont think we should expect miracles. We will reach the semi-finals at best with this team. Besides, I’m not so sure PDV’s ego will allow Rassie the power he needs to truly make a dif.
Good luck to him though. Am I correct in saying that this deal was made via WPRU and not something Rassie himself wanted?
4 May 2011, 08:53 am
@flanka(flanka)-3: Very good post
7 May 2011, 22:31 pm
SA would get maybe 2 players into a current AB team (Biz and Bekker). If we don’t make it to the semis it won’t be Div’s fault.
But that that won’t stop a lot of people roasting him.
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