The end of a dismal year

Please Andy. Get over your dislike of Peter De Villiers. He is a Bok coach. Finish and Klaar. How can 9 out of 12 be a dismal year. In your dreamland maybe. Jake White is no longer the Springbok coach Peter is. Adri Jacobs, JP, The Beast and other players are the gems that Peter discovered and nurtured and are now producing. It was your dismal year because you and your fellow doomsayers had to watch in dismay as Peter pass the test a a Bok Coach. The Boks might have not performed to their best in this tour but the results Andy are 2 out of 2.
Sphiwe

Sorry Sphiwe, but that's just not true. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that Andy has a bias against Pieter de Villiers.

The results speak largely for themselves: after winning the World Cup under Jake White, SA came last in the Tri-Nations under Pieter de Villiers. This is perhaps explainable by reasons other than the new coach: in the World Cup we didn't play Australia or New Zealand; and the Boks might have lacked a hunger to win after their thorough satiation at the World Cup.

But then we went to the UK, where we have barely scraped by teams that we would have expected to beat comprehensively, if not thrash. Australia and New Zealand's performances against the UK sides have completely shaded South Africa's, which were unimpressive to say the least. They have seemed to lack a solid game plan, and the responsibility for that lies with the coach.

We face England on Saturday, and if we win it will be 9 wins out of 13 (69%) for 2008. If we lose it will be 62%. Viewed in a contextual vacuum, those are good rates. But for a world-champion Bok team, they are not. We rightly use the best in the world (New Zealand and Australia) as our benchmarks and we hope to beat them more often than we lose to them. This year, we have not. Therefore it has been a bad year, in which the Boks played relatively dismally. They should do better.

Andy,
For a long time I have agreed with your sentiments regarding the dabbling of politicians in sport and the decisive insight you have provided through the haze and fog of SA rugby in the past. I do feel that your 'disappointing' perspective on the current Bok squad and performance for 2008 is severly misplaced! In your rhetoric, you drag us (SA, Boks etc etc) back to the same old pessimistic talk and clap-trap! Is the Bok cup half-full or half-empty? Lets get proactive and progressive; NOT regressive and pessimistic. We've had ENOUGH of that in the past! Eyes up and on the target looking forward!

Sphiwe Mboyane, I am of the view that the article was not necessarily out to discredit Pieter de Villiers, but rather to state where the National rugby team finds itself at this point in time. In all honesty, I think Peter de Villiers is doing an outstanding job if taken into account this is his maiden year (Jake White did not succeed in producing the equivalent in his first year) together with the limited time the team had to familiarize with each other. Many critics came down on Jake White for his poor performances in the first part of his bok coaching career, but ultimately he won the world cup by keeping to his vision and strategy (and not listening to critics). Judging Peter de Villiers so soon is not fair either way.

Beside the point, the SA rugby team has a horror weekend coming up, with a heap of injuries accompanying the English teams thirst for bok blood. This can surely not be taken as a measurement of the team’s development towards the future, which would just be unfair.