Birmingham – Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer’s two chief lieutenants, Jean de Villiers and Victor Matfield, will be off the field before half time in tomorrow’s crucial World Cup match against Samoa if they do not follow instructions and, in the case of De Villiers, is not showing improved form.
It has been reliably learned that a furious Meyer told the senior pair that their failure to carry out instructions played a major part in the disaster against Japan.
And during the match, Meyer sent on messages that the team had to cease the ball-in-hand approach that was playing into the hands of the Japanese, who were thriving on the fast pace of the game, and revert to the premeditated plan of tactical kicking, and driving and mauling by the forwards.
The pair have been given the work place equivalent of a “final warning” and it is known that De Villiers could be off before the 30-minute mark and youngster Jesse Kriel brought on to be reunited with Damian de Allende.
Schalk Burger will assume the captaincy should De Villiers be pulled off and Matfield be replaced by the sensational youngster Lood de Jager, who many feel should not have been dropped. Matfield has long been known as Meyer’s right hand man, dating back to their glory days at the Bulls and Meyer helped convince Matfield into making a comeback, but in recent months their relationship has allegedly become strained because of Matfield’s strong influence on the players.
Meyer has long been criticised for gambling on older and injured players for this World Cup and he is incensed that his loyalty has been betrayed.
And the criticism of Meyer picking a “Dad’s Army’ could grow exponentially if key player Willem Alberts goes home on Tuesday after a final medical call is made on his calf problem. Alberts, who has been perpetually injured this season, broke down in the captain’s run last Friday ahead of the Japan game. The powerfully-built Alberts was meant to be one of Meyer’s key ball carriers and vital to the game plan which includes big ball carriers crashing over the advantage line to create momentum.
Alberts was not available for selection this week and if he does not pass a fitness test early next week, he will go home and the likely replacement will be Heinrich Brussow, despite the much smaller Cheetah being a very different ball player to Alberts.
Brussow is one of the standby loose forwards and Meyer is known to be having a rethink of his breakdown strategy, which was horribly exposed by the lightening fast Japanese, while the Boks had their best breakdown display of the year when Meyer fielded two “fetchers” in Brussow and Francois Louw in the Boks’ redemptive win in Buenos Aires on August 15.
Usually, a Test match against Samoa would not loom large on the Springbok radar but these are unusual times for the beleagured Boks, and who would have imagined that a World Cup match against the Pacific Islanders in the English soccer city of Birmingham could be one of the most important the history of the Springboks.
The Boks have never lost to Samoa, but three months ago they had never lost to Argentina or Japan, and another historical defeat would certainly mean the end of Heyneke Meyer’s employment at Saru at the end of the tournament.
If the Boks lose, they could still sneak into the quarter-finals if other results go their way in the Pool and they beat their remaining opponents, Scotland and the USA, but their destiny would not longer be in their hands
And if the campaign ends in miserable failure, the Boks might want to copy the post-World Cup plans of the architect of their defeat last week, Eddie Jones, who says that when Japan are knocked out, he is taking a flight from England to Barbados “to watch beach cricket”.