A rugger year loaded with bull

It is for more reasons than one that South Africans can look back on the old year as one where the bull dominated. The provincial team from Pretoria won the Currie Cup and were the best local regional side in the Super 12, but the public were also expected to stomach and accept much that whiffed of that animal's dung.

South African rugby's current standing was summed up by the only entry the Springboks got in the Sunday Telegraph's photo-spread of the 2003 sporting year.

There they all were again, looking like startled deer, huddled together in that pit which added the word Staaldraad to the list of things English people find funny about my country of birth.

Mercifully for everyone concerned, Rudolf Straeuli did the right thing by falling on his own sword. There were few who mourned his departure after a reign which saw him win just two of the 12 big matches that the Springboks played while he was in charge.

The big former Springbok flanker provided much of the bull that was dished out during the year. Remember how we were told that he had a plan and we must just wait until the World Cup for it to unfold? And then we were spun the legend that the Boks had actually played sparkling attacking rugby in their two big games at RWC.

But where were the tries? Where was the plan? Bok captain Corne Krige seemed to think there was one, so did senior player Joost van der Westhuizen, the rest of us remain in the dark.

Whereas in the previous season the Boks appeared to be about to turn a corner in favour of an exciting new attacking game, Straeuli chose in the World Cup year to return to his more conservative roots.

Heralded by the sacking of Tim Lane as his assistant coach, this switch might have had quite a lot to do with all the bull that was spoken and written about the Bulls Super 12 team.

The Bulls extricated themselves from their usual position at the bottom of the log with a style of play that many saw as the traditional South African approach - in other words, bash the opposition to death at forward and then rely chiefly on a kicking flyhalf to do most of the rest.

Unfortunately the kicking flyhalf in question was Louis Koen, who by virtue of his success at this level, ended up wearing the Bok No10 jersey up to a point where it was really too late to introduce the prodigious talent that is Derick Hougaard, or anyone else for that matter.

The Boks ended up playing most of the year with a strategy that looked like it had been made. It appeared that Straeuli and his entourage had been duped into believing that the Bulls strategy was unbeatable. "Play it at forward and we will win the match" became the clarion cry, except it only worked against palookas.

The All Blacks, on two occasions in three starts, showed us that a Bok pack dominated by Bulls forwards is by no means invincible. Both they and England drummed out reminders that the Bulls did not in fact win the Super 12, they came sixth. That may be relative success if you consider where the Bulls were before, but it is not the sort of success that should justify a national coach building his whole strategy around that particular team.

Of course there was lots, lots more of this sort of blurred thinking and contorted messaging from the Boks during the course of the year, but the race controversy is too involved for me to go into detail in summing up the past 12 months. Let's just say it was one crisis after another, one massive mistake after one massive mistake.

Yet, for all that, I have at times wondered in these early days of Brian van Rooyen's reign as Sarfu president whether it is going to get any better. The phrase "better the devil you know" might have crossed many minds when a few weeks before Christmas it was announced that there would be four candidates for the Bok coaching job and three men who boasted little or no recent top level 15-man experience were ahead of Nick Mallett in the queue.

It does appear that who you know and who likes you remains more important in appointing the Springbok coach than what the different candidates can do to get the team playing decent rugby. I was reminded of this when I watched Alan Solomons' Ulster team win the Celtic Cup final in chilly Edinburgh the other afternoon.

There is so much South African rugby expertise over here (northern hemisphere) at the moment that it is not impossible to imagine it might significantly outweigh the coaching experience available back home.

Apart from the well-known names, one of our better young coaches, Stef Nel, has been called out to do an ambulance job with struggling Rotherham. He was helped initially by Alan Zondagh, who boasts more top level coaching years in both South Africa and overseas than any of the current Bok contenders yet is discounted from the equation because mistakes made a decade ago, when he was not as wise as he is now, are still being held against him.

I am not saying Zondagh should be the head coach of the Boks, but for Heaven's sake, shouldn't his years of experience demand that his brain be tapped into more than is the case at the moment.

As I have written umpteen times this past year, a good coach does not become such in five minutes and experience is the most vital ingredient.

Of course, Heyneke Meyer does have more than most in this department, and his excellent work with the Blue Bulls in two Currie Cups marks him as the only realistic contender of the four that were named before I left South Africa in mid-December.

But if Meyer is to be the coach, he needs to have the main say in selection, he needs to be allowed to put his systems in place, as he did so successfully with the Bulls.

The Currie Cup triumph of his under-strength Bulls was definitely the high point of the South African rugby year, particularly as they had to effect a dramatic change of style in order to pull it off.

The work Carel du Plessis did with an equally under-strength Western Province side in terms of bringing through much needed flair also provided cause for optimism.

There is plenty of talent coming through, as evidenced by the SA under-19 World Cup triumph a year after the under-21s under Jake White had done something similar.

Apart from Hougaard, there are several youngsters coming through who could become greats in their positions - Schalk Burger, Jean de Villiers, Ashwin Willemse and Fourie du Preez are four names that spring to mind.

Yet all the raw talent will amount to nothing if South African rugby does not get its house in order at the top and ensure there is enough coaching expertise to guide and manage this talent to greatness.

As you would have surmised by now, I am not so sure the change of governance in South African rugby will bring the desired changes in 2004. I fear that at Springbok and Super 12 level, it will just be more of the same. My New Year's wish is that I am proved wrong.