Wynne Gray: De Villiers' formula starts with hearing what players want

From all accounts Springbok coach Peter de Villiers is happy to embrace the thoughts of his senior players and assistant coaches before he distils their ideas and decides the appropriate plans and strategy for the week of each international.

It is a formula which has worked this season for the Boks as the coach has empowered the players, given them an environment where their experience and wisdom can emerge.

Privately, the coach and the players have decided what is a sensible approach to making a success of their alliance.

De Villiers has learned fast and absorbed a great deal of information.

He still comes out with his oddball expressions which, when lumped together, paint a picture of an idiosyncratic leader.

"I won't change my style," he said after a turbulent week.

"If I change my style I will change Peter de Villiers and then I would have to tell God he made a mistake when he made me." Or.

"The small things like judicial hearing will not take away the fact that we won. Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk won the Nobel Peace prize. No matter what they did wrong in their lives, no one can take away the fact that they won it," he proclaimed, comparing Schalk Burger and Bakkies Botha to the politicians.

"If we want to eye-gouge any Lions we will go down to the bushveld like we do and eye-gouge them there," he said in the wake of Burger's eye-gouging, before he doubled up with "and if we are going on like this, why don't we go to the nearest ballet shop, get some tutus and get a dancing shop going? There will be no eye-gouging, no tackling, no nothing and we will enjoy it."

The Boks believe they can bounce back from the blip in Brisbane. They realise they made a mistake in their planning for that test after getting it right in Perth.

They arrived late on the west coast, kept on South African time, stayed up well into the night and slept late in a strategy they claimed had them feeling very sharp on matchday in Perth.

But when they flew east to Brisbane, they hit the wall. They moped around their hotel, saying they were fatigued and could not sleep and their play reflected that when they faded in the second half.

This week they chose to stay on the Gold Coast, where the sun, sea and theme parks were deemed to be a better prospect than the sights and sounds in Hamilton.

De Villiers and his cronies thought their best preparation was to stay out of that rugby epicentre until as late as possible.

By some reckoning, de Villiers was appointed Springbok coach by a single vote.

It was early last year when he outlasted a group of other candidates, including successful Bulls coach Heyneke Meyer, to be installed as the first non-white coach of South Africa.

A slew of comments from SARU president Oregan Hoskins that skills were not the sole reason for de Villiers' elevation did not help the situation, while Gert Smal and Eugene Eloff then refused to allow their names to go forward as prospective assistants.

However, Springbok captain John Smit agreed to stay on as captain in a move which brought some stability.

There were those who predicted trouble because de Villiers, the former halfback from Boland, had never coached at Currie Cup level or in the Super 14. He had taken the national under-21 side but nothing higher.

His election was not based entirely on merit. There were other forces at work, affirmative action was involved as South African rugby acknowledged it had to rectify some of its grubby history by appointing more non-whites. De Villiers would have to be managed.

Two seasons on and the Springboks and de Villiers are on the cusp of Tri-Nations glory in Hamilton.

Whatever the state of collaborative interplay between de Villiers, his staff and senior players, something has been working for the Springboks. They have beaten the Lions and so far in the Tri-Nations have been beaten just once, last weekend by the Wallabies.

It has been some journey for the 51-year-old coach who grew up in the apartheid era when he suffered some unpalatable treatment.

He and his daughter were chased out of a park by security guards because of their colour and under the distasteful Group Areas Act was relocated in the Cape.

By all accounts a handy halfback, de Villiers chose to remain with a Coloured club during his playing days. He has fought for his rights and battled against prejudice throughout his life.

The Springboks enjoy his company. De Villiers was fast-tracked to the top because of political intervention but having reached there, the players have not felt threatened.

There has been far more coaching-by-committee than there ever was during the successful tenure of Jake White. That may have been essential as a swag of the Boks have more than 50 caps while Smit is an experienced and sensible leader.

We will see tomorrow whether de Villiers has pulled the right strings this time.