It may have been disingenuous to suggest there is a lock crisis or a complete leadership void, but for new Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer the timing of the leak of his approach to Victor Matfield could not have been better.
With Schalk Burger, the man who many consider the Bok skipper-elect, still battling his way back from injury, and Fourie du Preez expressing a reluctance to lead the Boks even if he was asked, and Jaque Fourie announcing that his commitments are now in Japan, it did make Meyer’s desire to get Matfield back on to the playing field more understandable.
And then there was the injury to Andries Bekker, which ruled the man who has been waiting patiently behind Matfield out of Friday’s Stormers clash with the Reds. The Bekker injury was to the lower back, where he has had problems before, so as Matfield pointed out during the Klipdrift Springbok sponsorship announcement in Robertson on Wednesday, it is a concern.
Another No 5 lock with Springbok experience, Alistair Hargreaves of the Sharks, then added fuel to Meyer’s argument with the announcement that he will continue his career with the English club Saracens at the conclusion of the Super Rugby season.
It’s easy to write off Meyer’s concerns by pointing to the many young locks coming through, and there is no denying that Eben Etzebeth of the Stormers is a special player, and that Juandre Kruger of the Bulls is showing a lot of promise.
But the Stormers coaches were concerned about the prospect of sending the still-green Etzebeth into the match against the Reds without Bekker alongside him, so you can understand if Meyer wishes to be conservative at an even higher level.
After all, even if Bekker is fit, it’s not as if he’s the most experienced international lock under the sun. Yes, he has stamped his authority on Super Rugby, but during the past few seasons he has struggled with injury once the international component has arrived, and of course he has been behind Matfield in the pecking order.
Young Bulls lock Flip van der Merwe has played for the Boks, but he hasn’t always convinced and has had a tendency to give away silly penalties, such as the one that Kurtley Beale kicked to enable Australia to win a Test on the highveld for the first time in more than 40 years at the end of 2010.
Last year’s understrength away leg of the Tri-Nations, of which Van der Merwe was a part, showed us the extent of the shortfall of experience in a Bok team that had been dominated for several years by the core of the group blooded by Jake White in 2004.
So yes, while there are good locks coming through, and there is validity to the call for Meyer to start with a new group, as White did eight years ago, there is just enough room for the new coach to claim that Matfield is a necessary inclusion in the playing group.
The blame for Meyer’s desire to have someone he knows well helping him steer the Boks in this difficult first year lies not with him but with the officials responsible for the coaching appointments.
Meyer lost out to Peter de Villiers in 2008 and hasn’t done much at the coalface of top-level rugby since then, so he is right when he says he doesn’t know the current players (outside of those from the Bulls).
It would have been different four years ago, when Meyer would have been better prepared for the job than he is now.
It was no secret that he intended to make Matfield the captain back then, and in 2008 there wouldn’t have been an issue with that because the lock had captained the Bulls to the first Super 14 trophy for an SA team in 2007.
A lot has happened since then, however, and the Matfield who the media saw in Robertson this week was noticeably lighter than he was when he was playing last year.
So if Matfield does decide to play, he is going to have to make that decision quickly and get into the heavy weights at the gym.
There are only seven weeks to go until the start of the series against England.
Mention of which brings up the real reason that Meyer is making what some might consider weird decisions and relying heavily on the people he knows – he has precious little time to prepare his team for a series that he sees as a must-win if he is to start his stint as coach in relative comfort.
His first game will kick off just seven days after a bruising Super Rugby derby between the Bulls and the Stormers.
But when it comes to leaders, the cupboard isn’t as laden as South Africans would like to think it is. Apart from Burger and Matfield, the other strong captaincy candidate would be the Cheetahs’ Adriaan Strauss, who Meyer is known to rate highly for his leadership and who apparently took a command role at the training camp this week.
Make no mistake, Strauss doesn’t just have the captaincy attributes that are necessary, he is also an excellent hooker, and would walk into the national teams of most other countries. But would Meyer be prepared to risk choosing a captain that plays the same position as Bismarck du Plessis, who was the notable loser when John Smit was asked to stay on during the De Villiers era? Then there is Chiliboy Ralepelle, also a potential captain for some time in this four-year cycle, who also plays the same position.
Jean de Villiers has been forwarded as a potential candidate but his suitability for the job is unrealistic if you consider how strongly Frans Steyn is likely to push him for his No 12 jersey.
The best captain in the country, if you are looking just at leadership potential and ability to inspire those around him, is probably Luke Watson. But his Kings team is not playing Super Rugby.
So if there is someone who should feel sore about Meyer’s approach to Matfield, it is Burger. He has had critics of his captaincy in the time he has led the Stormers, but ironically they have been similar to those levelled at Matfield – a tendency to eschew kickable penalties in favour of tap kicks and other poor on-field decisions being among them.
And although it is true that Matfield led the Bok teams that scored some notable wins – Dunedin in 2008, Twickenham in 2010 – he was also the leader of the team that was so tactically inept on the day they lost to Scotland at Murrayfield.
Meyer’s decision appears to have been made, however, and rumours of his approach to Matfield have been circulating since the start of the year.
It is now up to Matfield to decide whether to take a sabbatical from coaching and commentating – and in the end it will probably come down to how badly he wants to get back on to a stage he bade farewell to at the last World Cup. – Independent on Saturday