Mr Flexibility removes the quibbles

After taking a good look at the Springbok World Cup squad that was announced the other night, it is hard to quibble or find fault with any of the selections.

The surprise of course was the late inclusion of former Stormers flanker Francois Louw (‘former’ because he is now contracted to England club Bath). After writing a weekend newspaper column where I criticised coach Peter de Villiers for overlooking Louw and highlighted the problems associated without having like back-up for Heinrich Brussow, I can hardly slam him for his about turn now, can I?

Louw hadn’t been part of the Bok coach’s plans since last year’s Tri-Nations and he didn’t figure in the thinking in the early part of the home leg of this year’s Tri-Nations either.

De Villiers wasn’t a big fan of Louw, who he considered just a good Super Rugby player, so there has been a big about-turn there – and good on De Villiers for being flexible enough to make it.

There have been many faults and low points during the De Villiers reign as coach, but one thing he doesn’t appear to suffer from is the disease that has blighted so many of his predecessors – inflexibility. There have been many lines that De Villiers has taken on certain players that he has subsequently changed when he has been convinced otherwise.

For instance, while he was slammed by many of us critics for pushing Earl Rose a couple of seasons ago, he never did actually select Rose into a test team for an important game. We can only assume that his high regard for Rose was diminished once he had taken a closer look at him, and ditto for Isma-eel Dollie, who was called up to his first training camp in 2008.

Adi Jacobs was his favourite player in 2008, and although I was never as convinced about Jacobs as others were, I had to concede that Jacobs delivered far more during that season than anticipated. Now Jacobs isn’t even in his top 42 players – the Sharks impact substitute hasn’t even cracked a nod in the group of 12 players asked to be on standby.

Interestingly, the one selection I would question was of one of the players who raised eyebrows when De Villiers left him out of his initial squad in 2008. Johann Muller hadn’t played much at the 2007 World Cup but was recognised as a key member of the group and yet he wasn’t called up to the first training camp in Somerset West.

Now Muller has been away playing in Ireland, which is the reason I question the selection: I just haven’t seen him play. But while the cynical among us might argue that he owes his place to the fact he was a member of the leadership group in 2007 and is still liked and respected by those players, there are other rugby considerations that may have weighed heavily in the selection.

Jake White, when selecting players like Bob Skinstad, used to talk about the importance of having experienced, good team people in the group, players who could add value with their rugby intelligence and willingness to work hard for the team objective. Muller is one of those. Scribes who covered the overseas leg tell me he ran the lineout sessions over there, even when not playing.

In that sense, he is similar to former Stormers lock Anton van Zyl (now with Stade Francais). If I was selecting the squad, I would probably have opted for Anton as my back-up No 5 lock, but then Muller is the man with test experience and this is a World Cup.

The selection of Odwa Ndungane has been criticised, and I must admit that I thought Lwazi Mvovo was a better bet, but then you need to remember that when all three Sharks wings were fit and available, Ndungane played ahead of Mvovo at his franchise. Mvovo was part of a back three overseas that was shown up for lack of kicking ability, and Ndungane has a good enough catching and kicking game for him to play fullback occasionally.

And that selection also has to be looked at in the context of the utility component within the squad – Gio Aplon and Francois Hougaard are covering other positions but both are more than useful attacking wings, as Hougaard showed us as a replacement in Port Elizabeth this past weekend.

My biggest question mark over the squad is in the area where maybe De Villiers has already owned up to making a mistake, which is the lack of a proper renewal process over the past four years. While the Jake White class of 2007 are mostly still the best players in their positions at this level, some of them may not be as good as they were four years ago, and more of an effort should have been made to develop new players.

But in the final Tri-Nations match the old stagers in the team sent out a clear message that, perhaps aided by rest and whatever they got up to in Rustenburg, they are not past their sell-by dates. With over a month and a half to go to the knock-outs, which is when the real World Cup starts, the Boks have time to build and also enough time to sort out what contentious decisions still need to be made about the first-choice starting team.