Why that perennial search must continue

When the 37-man Springbok squad is announced after the Absa Currie Cup final ahead of the imminent tour of Europe, there won’t be too much debate over the men who will be wearing the No 10 jersey in the test match phase of the trip.

For some bizarre reason Morne Steyn appears to battle for acceptance as first choice from the national coaches. Peter de Villiers has on a couple of occasions referred to Ruan Pienaar as his No 1 flyhalf, and in a recent internet article assistant coach Gary Gold spoke about how Steyn is pressurising “the incumbent”.

The “incumbent” in this instance is presumably Pienaar, who played well on the last end-of-year tour and who started the last home international season well with a five star performance against the British and Irish Lions in Durban.

But Pienaar was dropped once Steyn had managed to get himself onto the field to play a winning hand in the crucial second test of that series at Loftus. At least him being dropped was the way a lot of the rest of us saw it – the Bok management tried to put a different spin on it, and we were always left with the impression during the Tri-Nations that Steyn was a stop-gap.

“Just wait until Ruan regains his form again, then you will see why our coach rates him as the Tiger Woods of rugby,” seemed to be the unspoken line coming out of every press conference.

And yet while this was happening so Steyn was accumulating the points with his boot – and winning match after match as he helped the Boks gravitate from being an excellent team into a nearly invincible one.

There has been no match winner anywhere in rugby this year that has come close to matching Steyn’s record, with his recent penalty at Newlands that dug the Bulls out of their hole in the Currie Cup semifinal and the one that won the Lions series showcasing his amazing BMT and ability to handle pressure.

Presumably though it has not provided enough reason for the coaches to accept his value, as in the Cape Town test Pienaar was sent onto the field in the second half to take Steyn’s place at flyhalf. Steyn was expected to move to fullback. The experiment lasted for about two minutes before the decision made in the coaching dug-out was overruled by the players on the field, with Steyn moving back to pivot and Pienaar moving to fullback.

With the players clearly favouring Steyn as their flyhalf, and there was no denying his effectiveness in the Bok No 10 jersey, there was an attempt to accommodate Pienaar as the starting fullback. This new experiment lasted two test matches before Pienaar himself went to the coach and asked to be left out in favour of the other Steyn, his former Sharks teammate Frans.

The upshot of all of this was that Pienaar arrived back in Durban by all accounts with his confidence shattered. He was never keen to move away from his preferred position of scrumhalf, but was told to concentrate on flyhalf as that was his future. When that didn’t work out, he ended up at fullback, so can you blame him if he is confused?

Sharks coach John Plumtree’s reaction to this was to settle Pienaar by returning him to the position he knows. With Juan Hernandez now part of the Sharks squad, it is unlikely Pienaar will get much game time at No 10 for the Sharks.

This has been criticised by the Bok management and no doubt the protests will intensify the longer Pienaar is kept away from playing flyhalf at his franchise. But come on, isn’t it time everyone accepted the reality – Pienaar is a wonderfully gifted player who on a given day can win a match on his own, but ultimately he is another Gaffie du Toit. In other words he has the talent, but he does not have the strong mind to be consistently good at flyhalf.

When Pienaar’s confidence is up, everything goes swimmingly, but too much depends on his first kick at goal. If he slots the first kick, then everything else slots into place, if he doesn’t, then he can fall apart, as we have seen him do a few times this past season.

I remember writing of Gaffie du Toit at a stage when there was a lobby for him to be selected as the Bok flyhalf that his inability to handle pressure was a fatal flaw that could not be overcome. Asking someone who doesn’t handle pressure well to play flyhalf is a bit like asking someone who hates water to become a scuba diver or someone who fears heights to become a trapeze artist.

It is just never going to work if the basic requirement or ingredient is not there, and in Pienaar’s case there is no evidence that suddenly, after several years of playing top class rugby in this country, he is going to miraculously develop a strong mind.

That is why the choice of player to wear the No1 0 jersey in the other tour matches is going to be particularly interesting when the squad is announced this week. South Africa has at last found an answer to the perennial question of who should play flyhalf – it is Morne Steyn – but it is because we are so unclear of the back-up that the search has to continue.