White right to ignore the bull

It was sad to see the Bulls become the umpteenth South African team to get so near yet so far in the Super 12, but at least there might be an upside if it sobers up the hysterical over-reaction to Jake White’s Springbok squad announcement.

When I saw the squad last week, and saw that Gary Botha had indeed been selected and there were nine Bulls players among the 33, I thought it would mean that for once a Springbok squad would meet with fairly universal approval.

I was wrong. It became clear over the next few days that for some Bulls fans, and indeed Bulls media men, a place in the semi-final meant the entire team should be selected into the Bok side.

White said he was confounded by the reaction. Frankly, so was I. Who were these extra players that should have been in the Bok side?

Richard Bands has his supporters, and probably always will. But, and you may disagree with me on this point, Bands has never been an all-conquering, invincible force as a scrummager, and some props who have played against him at provincial level have told me he is overrated in this aspect of the game.

The Bulls scrum was made to look vulnerable by a mediocre Sharks unit two weeks ago, and was shown up badly by the Waratahs in the semi-final, where Bands did not do himself any favours. In between those games the Bulls destroyed the Stormers scrum at Loftus. But that was Loftus, which does make a difference, and as far as I could make out, it was Kees Lensing who did the business against Faan Rautenbach, and not Bands dishing it out to Eddie Andrews.

All of this can of course be debated, but my point is that the Bands situation was hardly something akin to Jacques Kallis being left out of the national cricket team. It was a tough call by White, but it was not one deserving of such hysterical condemnation.

And ditto for Ettienne Botha. In Pretoria they rate this player incredibly highly, but if you watch his play in the tight games, which is what should be the criterion if you are selecting for test rugby, then he does not stand out as a potential international player.

Again, it is a matter of opinion, but it is not as if we are talking about Tim Horan here.

What about the rest of the unlucky Bulls players? Sorry, I don’t think there are any.

White is right to say that he wants Morne Steyn (who he rates very highly, by the way) to play in the world under-21 tournament rather than spend the next two months with the Springbok squad and not play any games. Remember that Jaco van der Westhuyzen is the incumbent Bok flyhalf, and is likely to remain first choice for a long time to come.

It may be that much of the unhappiness in the north towards White stems from the fact that there are more Stormers players in the Bok squad than Bulls players. Well, as a point of fact, the Stormers have just one more representative – they have 10 against the Bulls’ nine.

Okay, that doesn’t look good if you consider that just over a week ago the side with nine scored 75 points against the 14 of the side with 10. But then you have to remember that the players who everyone feels are lucky to retain their places were members of a team that won the Tri-Nations last year.

Not just that, they were players who played a pivotal part in it. Joe van Niekerk was my man of the match in the big win over the All Blacks, and Marius Joubert scored three tries in that game and was good in all the others too.

Neither has been in good form this year, but then White selected Van Niekerk last season when he had been injured and had not even been playing. Van Niekerk had no form to talk of, but White believed in him. Van Niekerk, in the Tri-Nations at any rate, stood up and delivered the sort of performance that vindicated his coach.

With over 30 test caps, Van Niekerk has experience you don’t just throw away. If you want stability, and we all know this was part of White’s success last year, then this is the sort of player you keep in the mix.

And that is particularly so if you consider that White did not just select a playing team – he chose 33 players. That means Van Niekerk, if he does not make any progress under White in the next month before the test season starts, might still find himself on the sidelines (but won't be discarded completely, because White has the bigger picture of World Cup 2007 in mind).

White can easily play Jacques Cronje at No8 against the French. He does have the impressive Bulls loose-forward in his squad. And Jaque Fourie, Bryan Habana and Jean de Villiers can play outside centre ahead of Joubert if the IRB World Player of the Year finalist from 2004 doesn’t start regaining his confidence when he works under White in Bloemfontein.

When you are calling up a squad of 33, why throw these players away? It is not as if he selected just one No8, or one No13. They have done the business before, and most importantly, they have won the big games before. It would be idiotic to expect White to abandon his successful formula from last season just because some of those players have failed to produce the goods under other coaches.

If there had been other players who had consistently excelled in the overseas stages of the Super 12, and who had stood out with an excellent showing in the away semi-final this past weekend, then it might be different and the outcry against White would be understandable.

But my take on the situation was summed up in one of my weekend reviews halfway through the Bulls’ away leg of the Super 12.

“Those players who want to nudge Bok coach Jake White have to do it now. For those on the outside of the Bok squad, it is form shown overseas that matters most. Everyone knows the Bulls can play at Loftus. But even if they go home after this tour and win every game it will mean nothing when it comes to the international perspective, because the last time I checked, the Springboks were not scheduled to play all their games at Loftus.”

I have checked that schedule again, and it still says the Boks only play one game at Loftus in 2005.

The Stormers never played well anywhere this year – home or away. But White is probably recalling that several of them were in the Bok sides that took the All Blacks to the last move of the game in Christchurch and came within a whisker of winning in Australia too.

He felt he had something to build on after those games, and in the absence of anyone else putting up their hands where it matters most, which is in the games overseas, he is right in not simply discarding those who have done it for him before.