Rugby: Wounded Boks make dangerous foes

By Wynne Gray

Traditionally it was a move associated with Afrikaners: trouble brewed, so they drew the wagons into a circle to repel any invaders, to keep their enclave safe.

It was a mindset inherent in the world of Springbok rugby as well. In strife they withdrew, they spoke their own language, it was them against the world. Since the return from sporting isolation in 1992, we saw and heard about a more open rugby community.

A record of 17 straight Springbok wins with articulate new coach Nick Mallett was opening new avenues and attitudes - until this season.

An end-of-year defeat by England which stopped the Boks beating the All Blacks' world record unbeaten test streak, then severe losses this year to Wales, the All Blacks and the Wallabies has created huge dramas in South African rugby.

There were reports of player rifts, provincial disputes, a lack of administrative strength and coaching consistency and then the stunning sacking of long-time captain Gary Teichmann this week.

Try to speak to Mallett, the usually eloquent and available 42-yearold Bok coach, and there was a no-go zone. A Rhodes scholar, Mallett has been very fluent and communicative in his trips to New Zealand and when the All Blacks have toured the republic. Sometimes it is hard to stop his chat.

But with crises boiling and rugby bushfires burning on many fronts in the republic, Mallett is not available. Ironically the English-born coach has taken on an Afrikaner persona in that high veld heartland until next Thursday.

Interview requests are refused politely. There is no venom, they are just not happening.

And when Mallett does hold a press conference in the middle of next week to announce his playing XV for the Pretoria test with the All Blacks, it will be his only public pronouncement. There will be no individual interviews before or after that meeting, a South African union spokesman said.

Every word Mallett had been saying on issues from race quotas, to team selection, to Teichmann's dumping had been dissected, inspected and interpreted. Mallett did not want to get sidetracked by anything in preparing his side for the domestic leg of the Tri-Nations series.

Mallett was chided for his "intelligent cheating" remark when it appears he meant Josh Kronfeld and David Wilson, rather than the Jeff Wilson attributed from the original South African source.

The coach has apologised for a recent remark about South Africans not understanding their rugby. He has had to deal with his conflicting views on Teichmann, one of the few players he thought had gone well against Wales and now considered to be out of form.

He has brought Brendan Venter back into the squad "because he was the best centre in England last year," though when told a year ago that Joel Stransky was in superb form in that country, he said that what players achieved there was irrelevant.

Mallett is accused of selective memory, but then that normally happens when a team struggle and the media and public look for answers. So Mallett has shut up the interview window.

"Nick is fine. He is in good spirits, he is thinking hard and looking to identify areas where improvement is needed and how to attain that," an official said.

As much as Sarfu will try and downplay the pressure building for results from the Springboks, rugby writers know Mallett is under the most severe pressure of his coaching career.

They maintain his badly timed sacking of Teichmann and the choice of volatile Joost van der Westhuizen as replacement skipper are just the latest examples of cluttered thinking.

Mallett does have a slender piece of fortune for the opening home Tri-Nations test. Had it been in Durban (Teichmann's base) or Cape Town (where Mallett's coaching group live) there would have been greater potential for player and public disharmony.

But this test is in Pretoria, at Loftus Versfeld, where a crowd of about 50,000 will be supporting the Boks big-time.

Three favourites of the Loftus crowd may be on the pitch. Certainly new captain van der Westhuizen, probably centre Andre Snyman and possibly flanker Ruben Kruger - three Blue Bulls who will invoke a crowd frenzy as great as anything the All Blacks will face this year.