Harry must trust his instincts more

It is amazing how much someone's best laid plans for a post-match press conference can be effected by whether the Springboks win or lose.

You have to hand it to the management though. They are honest about it. When I asked at the start of the game if I could speak to a variety of different players afterwards the response was that there would be as many as eight of them present if the Boks won. If they lost it would be a different story - we would get none.

That is exactly how it turned out. Communications manager Mark Keohane informed us that we had "10 minutes to interview Harry and Bob and there will be no one- on-one interviews afterwards".

That was not what I wanted to hear but it does not mean I am going to do what the cricket writers did last week and devote a column to media relations, which must be boring to readers.

I will say though that by all accounts the Boks are way ahead of the cricketers when it comes to the professionalism of their media operation. And they may even be the best in the rugby world now that the Australians have closed up shop.

The point is that I could understand why no players were brought to the media conference at Stade de France. There really was nothing to say.

We critics are paid to spend hours dissecting their performances and looking for reasons why the team did not perform on the night. But there are times when a non-performance cannot be properly explained other than to say it simply did not work.

Sometimes it just goes wrong on the night and the team fails to click. If you have guessed by now that I have some sympathy for Viljoen you would be right. I feel the same way that another journalist felt after spending the day playing golf with Carel du Plessis in Brisbane four years ago.

The then Springbok coach was being severely criticised at the time for his team's poor performances and the previous night his side had been comprehensively outplayed by the Aussies. The journalist in question told us at a press conference that night that he felt sorry for Du Plessis in that the coach cannot play for his players.

The argument then was that Du Plessis did not coach his players to make the mistakes they did. The same holds true for the match in Paris.

Viljoen was not telling a lie when he said he did not tell the players to execute all those ridiculous grubber kicks and wrong options.

Perhaps the real reason for the Bok defeat was summed up by the commentator who said that France gave the impression they had nothing to lose and did not really care while perhaps the Springboks cared too much. In other words the pressure of having to get it all together first up against a team like France was just too much.

Playing their first game together in over two months, it was a tall order for the Boks to be expected to start their tour off on a resounding note against a team like France. It takes time for a touring side to establish momentum and it needs to be remembered that the brilliant 52-10 victory scored by Nick Mallett's team at Parc des Princes in 1997 came after a mediocre performance in the tour opener against Italy in Bologna.

But that does not mean that Viljoen is not culpable for this defeat.

He most certainly is. For while his players made unforgiveable mistakes and largely let down their coach down by not playing to their true potential, it is also true that Viljoen's selections left them up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

Sorry, but a backline combination which had Braam van Straaten, Trevor Halstead and Andre Snyman did not gel with me before the game and my misgivings were proved correct.

The Bok problem at Stade de Frances can probably be summed up thus: The French, for all their inexperience, fielded a team loaded with quick reaction players whereas the key decision making and attacking positions in the Bok team were occupied by slow reaction players.

Snyman and Halstead did not impress as an attacking combination (Halstead was great as an individual) for the Sharks so why did Viljoen think they might suddenly do it for the Boks? Van Straaten had one of his better games in a No10 jersey, but he lacks the dynamic approach of the other top international flyhalves of his era.

On their own all of those guys are fine players. As with Pieter Muller and Japie Mulder in the 1990s, they are players who do exceptionally well when paired with players who possess the silky skills they may lack. But as a combination they are a non-starter.

If you look back at Viljoen's successful Currie Cup teams of the past decade it is easy to see where he is going wrong. At Transvaal in the early '90s he had Martin Knoetze and Hennie le Roux, at Natal he had Dick Muir and when he won the Currie Cup with Western Province in 1997 he had Muir as his captain.

In a nutshell what Viljoen's Springbok team lacks is a playmaker.

Judging from his comments earlier in the year he knows how important such a player is if his gameplan is to ever see the light of day. If he wants to survive as Springbok coach he needs to somehow forget the fear of failure which precipitated all the latter day talk of "horses for courses" and trust his instincts.

If he did that at least we, the press and the public, would be less confused about what he is trying to do and maybe we would get a chance to believe in it.

I fancy the same may hold true for the players.