Rugby: Baying for blood in Sth Africa

By Wynne Gray

Billboards around Cape Town show little compassion for Springbok coach Nick Mallett.

Posters screaming "Worst Boks Ever" are on many street corners as the pressure tightens even further for Mallett and his side to find a win against the Wallabies tomorrow (NZ time).

Mallett brought a glow to the Cape for some time, but the dramatic fall from grace for the Springboks has delivered doomsday forecasts about the side's last chance for Tri-Nations redemption at Newlands.

With each defeat comes more rumour, theory and scuttlebutt about the Springbok troubles, rancour which is far more cruel than the inquisitions levelled at the All Blacks last season.

There have been accusations of provincial selection bias, talks of team rifts, quota problems, massive injury dramas and then the controversial sacking of longtime skipper Gary Teichmann.

Suggestions persist that top-rated first five-eighths Henry Honiball is still unavailable because of his anger about the axing of his great friend Teichmann; that his injury is a smokescreen.

Honiball has used a specialist's advice that he needs to rest ankle ligament damage but other sources maintain his absence is in sympathy for Teichmann and wonder whether he will even go to the World Cup.

They also report that Teichmann has urged his close mate not to be a martyr, that he must be available if the Springboks are to have any show of retaining their World Cup crown in October and November.

The contrast in South African rugby fortunes is staggering. Late last year they equalled the All Blacks' world record mark of 17 straight wins before disaster struck.

Defeat by England ended the golden run but it was considered just a stumble, a hiccup and it seemed that way when the Boks began this year with two overwhelming wins against Italy. But the Italians were woeful and since then the Springboks have tasted only misery.

there have been losses to Wales, the All Blacks twice and the Wallabies - the worst run of defeats by South Africa since the seven straight losses in 1964-65.

On top of the form slide, Mallett is battling political pressure to include black or Coloured players in his side and a media which grows more hostile with each defeat.

Mallett has retreated markedly from the man who almost had to be gagged last year. Now he seems to speak publicly only when he announces his team selection. Even his lengthy explanations on the South African Rugby Football Union website have disappeared.

Some of his selections remain baffling. The most obvious is fullback Percy Montgomery, a player well out of form all year but apparently not included in Mallett's rotation policy.

Critics point out that Montgomery is from the Cape, as is Mallett, and has been given a dispensation no other player has in the more than 40 changes Mallett has made or been forced into this season.

It is messy. There is far more spite and malice in South African rugby than there ever was around the All Blacks and their run of five defeats last season.