Straeuli ambulance job may be necessary

This may be clutching at straws, but then Springbok rugby has plunged into such a parlous state that perhaps we should grab any straw that we can find.

The straw that offers me the faintest of hopes comes in the form of a memory which suggests that we may yet discover some method in Harry Viljoen's apparent madness.

For those who have not already guessed, the memory jolt in question is the Western Province Currie Cup season of 1997. It may be over four years ago now, but recall of the gloom which engulfed WP rugby when Viljoen's team first started playing is still fresh.

Province had not qualified for the Super 12 that year, so they played in a Bankfin Night Series competition. WP, not to put too fine a point on it, played some damn awful rugby and struggled to put it together against even the most mediocre of platteland teams.

Like he is doing now with the Springboks, Viljoen spoke of a new approach. He had in mind a strategy which was apparently geared towards all-out attack.

But did we see this in those early WP games? Not even a glimpse. Instead of warming to Viljoen's team, the Newlands terraces just became emptier and emptier.

As with now, there were some serious question marks over the WP forward play.

This contributed to the inability of the backs to show that Viljoen's ideas had any relevance to rugby as it is played in the flesh as opposed to the mind.

Frankly, it was a time when no-one in Cape Town would have bet a dime on WP finishing in the top six of the Currie Cup, let alone winning it. But win it they did. One glorious day in Bloemfontein, in a match where Free State forwards won 70% of the ball but still saw their team lose by 30 points, the WP game just clicked.

Suddenly everything that their opponents did looked archaic, and everything the Province players touched turned to glittering gold. The Golden Lions were destroyed a few weeks later and from then on there was no looking back. By the end of the season, Viljoen, after spending so much of the early part of the season staring into the abyss, had coached WP to their first outright Currie Cup title in 11 seasons.

Can he do it again? There is no telling with Viljoen, but right now it might not be a good idea to completely write him off. He does have a history of making apparent madness turn into genius.

There is another reason why, deep down, I may be a little more optimistic than some. It concerns Viljoen's comments after the Italy test in Port Elizabeth.

Viljoen, instead of deflecting blame to all corners of the planet, owned up to his culpability in the early-season mess that the Boks have got themselves into.

In admitting that he had made some big mistakes, Viljoen said that he may have been guilty of trying to cram the players' heads with too much new stuff too soon. In doing that Viljoen at least did one thing that his predecessor, even when it was blindingly obvious, refused to do - he admitted that he was wrong.

For South African rugby's sake we can only hope that he meant it when he said that the Boks will be bringing the new innovations through much slower from now on. If that means a greater emphasis on the basics that were such a South African strength in the recent Super 12, then we should all whoop with delight.

But as I said, the foregoing is probably all clutching at straws. For the truth is that I share the gloom of my fellow critics.

Sometimes it may be wrong to look for method when there is none. It was pointed out to me the other day that when Viljoen announced his initial selection in May, I tried my damndest to follow his point of view. While deep down the selection of Francois Swart made no sense at all, I reasoned it on the basis that it was just a training camp he was being invited to attend and he was not being offered a Springbok blazer.

But with the benefit of hindsight, it was my colleague Dan Retief who called it best. He pulled no punches in writing that the selection was a disgrace and an insult to the traditions of Springbok rugby.

No matter where Viljoen goes from here, he cannot defend himself from the charge that in several of his selections he has done the South African game a huge disservice. By saying that Super 12 form does not matter, which he has done over and over again and continues to do so, Viljoen has undermined the structures which hold the game together.

Should he continue as coach into next year, which I am starting to seriously doubt, how is Viljoen ever going to keep his players in line if they all decide that perhaps they should take a break from the rigours of Super 12 rugby and start the season off in more sedate fashion?

He can hardly tell them that they have to play Super 12 as it is there that they prove whether they still have it to play international rugby. As we have seen with Gaffie du Toit and a host of others (refer to Retief column 'Pick...and Pay' for more on this), it may be in the best interests of the players if they start the year injured.

Maybe there is some method in his madness, but Viljoen's Boks are going to have to make some dramatic improvements in the Tri-Nations if it is to be justified to a South African rugby public which has a right to wonder how the Boks came to need such a dramatic overhaul when the local Super 12 teams have just completed their most successful season.

Lest it be forgotten, Nick Mallett was also bringing through a new approach, and in his last two Tri-Nations games in charge the Boks competed more than adequately against Australia and New Zealand. But Viljoen gives the impression that Bok rugby was dead and buried, hence some of the most bizarre selections of the post-isolation era.

For example, he has chosen a captain who is just making his way back from injury and who frankly does not need the extra pressures that the leadership will bring. Bob Skinstad may be the right choice for 2003, but as I have written elsewhere, that is still some way off.

Right now it cannot possibly be said that his Super 12 form or anything that he has done recently can justify his new status as a gauranteed member of the starting lineup. Viljoen has broken one of the most basic laws of rugby selection - you do not drop a captain or important player unless you are absolutely certain that the replacement is both a better player and fully fit.

Not afraid of contradicting himself, Viljoen followed up his selection of an out of form captain by using form as a reason for the axing of Rassie Erasmus.

If it can be said that Skinstad has the intrinsic class to be a member of the squad regardless of current form, then surely the same can be said for Erasmus.

Contradictions are almost as plentiful under the Viljoen regime as are assistant coaches. In his initial selection for the French tests, Deon Kayser was left out because he was too old. But the first choice inside centre at the time, Japie Mulder, was the same age as Kayser (31). Now Kayser is back in, so obviously he got younger in the last few weeks.

Speaking of Mulder, how did Viljoen ever arrive at the conclusion that Mulder would be his ideal inside centre at a time that he was clearly looking for someone with play-making and distribution skills? Mulder is a fine player, but distributor he ain't.

It gets worse. Now we have Braam van Straaten lined up to fill the position. After the initial selection, when Van Straaten was omitted, Viljoen and one of his assistants, Jake White, told me that he was left out because to select him would "be a backward step". Why then is he back in the squad? Are we to understand then that the Boks are about to take another backward step, of which there have been several since the demise of Mallett.

The point about Van Straaten is that if he still figured in Viljoen's plans, which clearly he did, then surely he should have been at the Plettenberg Bay camp ahead of Swart. The Boks would have gained more from introducing Van Straaten to Viljoen's new game than they did by having Swart (who currently plays off the bench for the Leopards). The same holds true for several other players.

Then we have perhaps the biggest clanger of all - the decision to call up under- 21 player Johann van Niekerk for a Tri-Nations series involving the All Blacks and Australia. If he is as good as Viljoen seems to think he is, surely he should have been tried out against the lesser opposition posed by Italy first.

Sorry, but if Erasmus' allround abilities and experience are not good enough for the bench, then Viljoen should have gone for the inform Charl van Rensburg.

If you really wanted to pick holes in Viljoen's nonsensical selections you could be at it all day. The point is that Viljoen has taken a radical line that in many instances defies rugby logic and common sense. He has shown that he has no respect for the structures of rugby.

If this all comes good, as Viljoen's history suggests it just might, then we should all hail Viljoen as a genius. But his departure from what is fair and right for the players and rugby fans of South Africa has been so radical that it must start bearing fruit in the Tri-Nations if it is to be allowed to continue.

As with Carel du Plessis, who had good ideas but no experience of putting them into practice, Viljoen has the sort of romantic vision which has to be seen to work if South African rugby is to allow itself to be led in the direction he has chosen.

Should he fail now, the time may already have arrived for Rudolf Straeuli, who should have a more pragmatic approach and realistic understanding of what is needed, to do the "ambulance job" that his mentor Kitch Christie did with such dramatic effect six years ago.