See you again soon, Victor

Victor Matfield, like all great players, is probably too competitive to have enjoyed his last run out as a rugby player. For him, conceding 60 points would have been a rare experience, as for most of his career he was the one who dished it out, such as that crazy Saturday afternoon in 2005 when the Bulls smashed the Stormers 75-14, and then there was that 90-odd pointer against the Reds in 2007.

Then again, Matfield is well rounded enough as a human being to understand what a Barbarians game is all about. So maybe he found some fun in the experience, even though it didn’t realise the result it did two years ago, when he captained the Barbarians to their win over the All Blacks. And he will also know, as should we, that this wasn’t the last time world rugby is going to see him.

Matfield rounds off his excellent autobiography Victor – My Journey (with De Jongh Borchardt and published by Zebra Press) by saying that he has a new dream: to arrive back in South Africa as coach of the Springboks with his captain and his team with the Webb Ellis trophy firmly in their grasp. Of course Matfield does know what that feels like, for he did it in 2007 as a player.

He also knows the opposite feeling, for he was also part of losing World Cup efforts in 2003 and 2011. It is partly because Matfield lived through so much, both good and bad, with both his beloved Bulls and the Springboks that makes the book a must-read. There are only a smattering of Springboks who were part of the entire journey from Rudolf Straeuli through to Peter de Villiers, with John Smit and Jaque Fourie being the only others I can think of.

In keeping with who he is, Matfield doesn’t “take out” anyone in the book. Even his at-times tetchy relationship with Jake White is dealt with diplomatically, and while he makes it clear he and White will never be best mates, he does acknowledge White’s achievements and says he is a good coach.

Perhaps the person who cops it the most from Matfield is the Springbok assistant of the past four years, Dick Muir, for Matfield is quite honest about what he thought of any move to take the team away from what he refers to as their traditional approach. But then he also says that the management team that took the Boks to this last World Cup was the best available.

Sometimes it is difficult for a journalist who covers the team as his beat to review rugby books, for the behind-the-scenes revelations that usually sell books often aren't new to you. It is easy to forget that what to you may be old hat isn't to most readers.

As Matfield was never one of those members of the camp that I used as a source (indeed, I can't ever recall speaking to him outside of the press conference/interview environment), it was interesting for me to read his views of the mixed messages that were being put out in De Villiers’s first season as Bok coach in 2008. They were similar to what I was getting from other people in the camp at the time.

In particular, I remember asking the coach a question at a press conference after the Durban defeat to Australia. Div had been explaining that he was trying to get the team to do something new, when I asked him why he felt it was necessary to do that when the Boks were world champions. Matfield, sitting alongside De Villiers as the captain that day, appeared to nod involuntarily when the question was asked.

Was he agreeing with the point behind the question? I am not sure and I don’t care to ask, but from the book it’s clear which way he wanted to go. And it was the direction the Boks started to head immediately after that game and they stayed pretty much on that course for the next three years, perhaps in the end to a fault.

Although Matfield is honest enough to admit he doesn’t think De Villiers was the greatest technical coach, his affection for the most recent Bok coach comes through strongly, and like the rest of the Boks, he has admiration for De Villiers’s way with players. The message that comes across is that there are many different ways to coach.

That might have been a good lesson for Matfield himself as he prepares for the next part of his journey, and in this sense it was pleasing to read that he is not looking to come into coaching at the top, as other former playing greats like Carel du Plessis and Martin Johnson did with disastrous results.

There is no denying that like Rassie Erasmus before him, Matfield is one of those geniuses that on a technical level probably could make a quick transition. But some time away doing a coaching apprenticeship – and it would probably be a great idea, though one he probably wouldn’t agree with, to do it away from the Bulls – would serve a good purpose.

He is going to be working as an analyst for SuperSport next year but I am sure that it won’t be long before we see Matfield back at the coalface doing the strategising that was so valuable to all the teams he played for in the latter part of a celebrated career.