The Honiball solution

If Jake White is forced to play Jean de Villiers at No10 in the test against Ireland it may well signal the arrival on the scene of a new version of a player who has haunted a succession of coaches and bedevilled the lives of other flyhalves.

For if De Villiers does run on at outside half it may well represent the reincarnation of Henry Honiball; the bone-hard Natal Sharks flyhalf who played a crucial role in the success of Ian McIntosh and Nick Mallett’s sides and whose premature departure, through injury, robbed South Africa of a kingpin.

Honiball, abnormally big for a flyhalf, transformed the way we saw the position and brought about a hard, abrasive edge with which other sides found it difficult to cope and which carried the Springboks on a compelling run of 17 straight victories.

The “in-your-face” style Honiball imparted, both with his devastating tackling and ability to take the hits and set up players running off him, brought to bear the natural attributes of pace and size of South African players and, in 1998, made us the best side in the world.

When he was injured, a calamity that had a crucial bearing on the Springboks failing to retain the World Cup in 1999, his then coach Nick Mallett (and some of his successors) tried to get other pivots, notably Gaffie du Toit, Jannie de Beer and Braam van Straaten, to perform the same role but Honiball, the “Bergville Blade,” proved to have been indispensable.

It was not until Jake White came up with the two-pronged solution of bringing Jaco van der Westhuyzen and Percy Montgomery back from overseas, the former to distribute the ball and call the attacking shots and the latter to take over the goal-kicking, that some comfidence and continuity returned to the position of flyhalf.

White, who had worked closely with Honiball as the Springbok team’s technical coach during the halcyon Mallett years, wanted his Springboks to be more attack-minded and it is no surprise that his efforts at “thinking out of the box” when Van der Westhuyzen was hurt caused him to alight on De Villiers as the possible answer at flyhalf.

The 23-year-old whose start to international rugby was so blighted by injury is one of White’s precocious youths and did a job for him on the left wing, with Clyde Rathbone and Dewi Swartbooi in the centre, when he won the IRB under 21 World Cup in 2002 and the coach’s eyes must have lit up when the thought of moving him to flyhalf occurred to him.

Honiball also started life as a centre and was not an impressive kicker of the ball, until later in his career when he took on and perfected the role, but he brought a confrontational directness to the play of the Springboks that few understood at the time.

If anything, De Villiers, who has been an inside centre for most of his young life, has more creative hands than Honiball, is as big (1.90m, 100 kgs) and faced with the prospect of losing Van der Westhuyzen the coach’s idea must soon have become a conviction.

White, loathes the thought of his teams giving up possession, and he obviously saw in De Villiers the package of strength, size and skill to take the ball up and create opportunities for awesome runners such as the loose forwards, Van Niekerk, Burger, Venter, Smith, Cronje, Britz et al, and also backs such as Barry, Joubert, Willemse and Montgomery.

White liked what he saw of De Villiers running the show at practices and he was clearly willing to take a chance on Du Preez and Montgomery taking on the ball-clearing duties.

At the time of writing it was unclear whether Van der Westhuyzen would be able to play or not but, as they say in these parts, to be sure the day will come that Jean de Villiers appears in the No10 jersey.