South Africans can be such neanderthal rugby thinkers

So Percy Montgomery finally gets his marching orders. Thousands, maybe millions of South Africans, will probably be applauding coach Harry Viljoen for that decision.

By bringing in Conrad Jantjes as Montgomery's replacement, Viljoen has also made his most concrete and positive statement yet about his own commitment to the transformation process. As I wrote in a previous column, Viljoen does steal a march on some of his predecessors in that he does genuinely seem to see beyond colour.

Jantjes has been selected for the same reason as Johann van Niekerk (they call him Joe in the Bok camp). In other words, he is seen as a player with immense potential - someone who can be entrusted with the task of wearing the Springbok No15 jersey in the next World Cup.

At least that is the way Viljoen sees it. That is the gut feel that he is following on this occasion, and well done to him for having the bravery (some would say foolishness) to stick to his guns. There are many, with Laurie Mains being the obvious case in point, who would disagree with his optimism.

But do you want to know who I would have as my fullback? Percy Montgomery, that's who. Okay, so now I hear many of you saying that is the typical one-eyed view of someone who lives in the Cape. Wasn't Nick Mallett, who also lives in the shadow of Table Mountain, guilty of thinking that Montgomery's blonde head was responsible for spreading a radiance around him that made him a certain selection for every Bok team?

Until recently Viljoen, who also lives on the wrong side of the Hex River Mountains and among a community who thinks that the umbilical cord of SA rugby is firmly connected into the rocks of Table Mountain, thought the same. He even wanted him as his flyhalf.

But down in the Cape, where some misguided rugby writers seem to think that the team Mark Andrews led in the most recent Super 12 were a bunch of dinosaurs (no kidding, someone really wrote that), they think I am a Shark.

My support for Percy has nothing to do with the fact that I live within two kilometres of the coldest ocean in the world and the same distance from one of the most famous panoramic views on the same earth.

I, along with everyone else, thought Mallett should have dropped Montgomery in the buildup to World Cup 1999. The guy was nowhere and his confidence had gone walkabout to such an extent that he would have been lucky to make the Western Province team.

But it is that charmed existence that Montgomery has lived in the Springbok jersey that makes his omission for the Pretoria test so ironic. He has played far, far worse than he did at Newlands last Saturday and then gone on to be a fixture in the last line of defence for another 10 tests.

Unless I know absolutely nothing about rugby, Montgomery was actually one of the more impressive Springboks on the field. He did come up with at least one of those indecipherable mind blanks that occasionally sees him look like a complete nitwit, but for the most part he was steady at the back.

He also pulled off some excellent tackles and on several occasions that he ran from the back he could have set up tries were it not for the poor finishing of those around him. Okay, he did not always pack his usual length into his line kicking, but that seems to have been a South African problem that has been in existence ever since Viljoen decided that a former Aussie rules officiando could provide the answers to every problem related to goalkicking.

What I do know though is that he would find more distance with those long left footed kicks of his than either of Jantjes or Thinus Delport, neither of whom have been particularly impressive this season either.

My main problem, however, is not so much that Montgomery has been dropped but the reasons that are perceived to be behind this action. Viljoen, in a radio interview run in Durban the other day, mentioned that the hostile Loftus crowd might boo him and thus ruin his confidence forever.

It is that sort of thinking, as well as the perception that Percy was awful at Loftus because he missed four goalkicks, that sometimes leads me to think that I live in the most neanderthal rugby nation in the world.

Since when is a player left out of a team because a crowd might get to him. And what is it with we South Africans that we would jeer someone wearing the green and gold in the first place. Isn't it just the sickest indictment of our rugby mentality.

A mentality, might I add, that is backward in comparison to that of New Zealand and Australia, where they look beyond whether a player slotted his goalkicks or not when they decide whether a player was poor or excellent. I am not sure that Braam van Straaten, with all his limitations, would come anywhere near even Super 12 level rugby if he was a resident of New Zealand or Australia.

Some of my best friends, even family members, lambasted Montgomery for his poor performance last week. Invariably, once they were pressed into asking what the player had done wrong, it was those goalkicks that were mentioned.

And those who attacked his general play could not keep his blonde hair and his other eccentricities out of their analysis. Maybe Mallett was right - if Montgomery dyed his hair dark and tried to become more inconspicuous, maybe he wouldn't get half the flak he does.

Make no mistake, I am not the greatest Percy Montgomery fan on the planet. I really do think he was fortunate to have played as many tests as he has. But for heaven's sake lets get a sense of perspective.

Leaving a test player out of a team because he missed a few goalkicks - his direct replacement is not the team's new goalkicker - and because the crowd may not like him is just reasoning that is both juvenile and unprofessional.

Had Viljoen gone public with the reason for Montgomery's axing that he gave me in a private conversation, it would have made far greater sense. Few would argue with his view that as Montgomery was only selected ahead of Jantjes for his goalkicking prowess, the player's place-kicking failures last week left him with little option.