Meyer tried to lure Springbok lock, Victor Matfield, out of retirement for the England series. It is now clear that this will not happen and now the Springbok coach has turned his attention to Fourie du Preez. Du Preez, a brilliant servant of Springbok rugby, and arguable one of the best scrum halves in world rugby when he was at his peak, is going on 30 and playing his rugby in Japan. Du Preez himself made it clear that Ruan Pienaar is currently at the
pinnacle of his career and is the right choice for the Springbok jersey. 

Pienaar has been playing top flight rugby in Ireland for Munster and has just been nominated, one of 5 players, for the European Player of the Season. Yes he didn’t get the award but a nomination says a lot about his current form. Pienaar is also 2 years younger than Du Preez and looking at the 2015 RWC it says a lot. The Heineken Cup competition might not be as hard as SupeRugby it is worlds apart from the Japanese league. Pienaar has performed and performed consistently in the Heineken Cup. 

That said we also have Francois Hougaard, the 24 year old Bulls and Springbok scrum half. Hougaard has come in to his own during the last season at fly half. He might not kick as much from the base of the scrum, but reminds of Joost vd Westhuizen with his sniping breaks and runs around the fringes. Hougaard will only be 27 in 2015 and will have heaps of experience and youth to bring to a Springbok team. 

Both Pienaar and Hougaard can also play on the wing and fullback, with Pienaar that have played Fly half as well. Pienaar’s goal kicking adds some advantage and his kicking from hand is brilliant right now. I would choose
either one as starting scrum half, depending on the opposition and weather conditions, with the other one on the bench. For a running game Hougaard to start and a kicking game Pienaar. 

Dewaldt Duvenhage is another 24 year old scrum half that is starting to show his worth in SupeRugby. He has an all round game and last year showed that he can play at Fly half and kick for goal if the need should arise. Behind the Stormers pack he has taken control and marshalled the troops and dictated play this season. A definite 3rd choice in South Africa at the moment. 

Meyer has hinted that he wants Matfield or Du Preez as his captain, because of their experience and the fact that he knows them from his time as Bulls coach. With Matfield out of the picture it means Meyer wants to make Du Preez
Springbok Captain should he select him. Now if memory serves to be correct, Du Preez was never a first choice or even second choice as Captain at the Bulls when Meyer coached them. What has changed now?

Meyer has 3-4 Captains at his disposal in the current crop of Springbok players, all capable to make the team purely as players. Pierre Spies from the Bulls if he wants someone he has worked with before. Not that Spies is the best
captain there is but he is a capable captain. Then there is Schalk Burger who has done a brilliant job for the Stormers and WP in the past. He however is not available for the England series.

Andries Bekker has shown in the past that he is a natural leader and very capable of being a captain. Again not the best but capable. Jean de Villiers has however stepped up this season for the Stormers, as he did for the Boks in that famous win over the All Blacks at the House of Pain a couple of seasons ago. He is leading a struggling Stormers team to win aftyer win in SupeRugby motivating them enough to win when teams have come back against them. 

Looking at 2015 and the Rugby World Cup, now is the time to start building a team. Yes Jean de Villiers will not be around by then, but neither will Du Preez. Select a scrum half that will be young enough to still play 80 minutes at
top form. 

Build the team now and the Captain will select himself through proven leadership. For now select the best 22 and then the Captain that way the Springboks will win every test. Forget which province the player plays for or what he has done in the past, select the best. Don’t bring back players for who they were, but rather because they are the best available for selection. 

I don’t know what Meyer is smoking, it might be his used tea bags or Divvy’s old socks. It might be some good stuff from Mozambique. Whatever it is it is clouding his judgement. Bringing back players like Du Preez might give him the wins now, but it might also cost him a chance at the 2015 RWC when he has no players with enough experience or a team that knows each other well. 

Jake White got it right 9 years ago. He didn’t win every test, but he won the most important one during his career as Springbok coach. He won the 2007 World Cup. Divvy won a lot of test as coach, but couldn’t win a World Cup. In my view partly because he had to much experience and to little youth and partly because of Bryce Lawrence. Hopefully Meyer gets it right and can walk away with the World Cup in 2015. 

But we will have to wait and see…….

Hoskins then went further to say that the same zero tolerance stance should be taken against players that attack each other on the field. Here is an extract from the sport24 article: 

"Hoskins said he expected provincial judicial committees to be similarly vigorous when it came to cases of on-field violence between players. He said he had also written to the Schools’ Rugby Association asking them to warn their members of SARU’s stance. He also challenged them to enforce traditional standards of respect and fair play as enshrined in the BokSmart programme, a national rugby safety certification process, to which all coaches (and referees) are signatories. Sport24 "
After a 2nd XV game had to be called off by a referee after a fight involving just about every player, this statement makes sense. This is however my problem with the statement lies:

Hoskins is asking school rugby bodies and provincial structures to take strong action against violent actions by school and club players. Not a bad thing in my view, boxing and wrestling has no place on a rugby field, but what messages is SARU, SANZAR and the IRB sending to youngsters? The way they are handling these type of incidents in top rugby competitions says a lot. Remember youngsters look up to their heroes and watch them weekly. They strive to be like them. They see what these players do and the action taken by the judicial systems in place. 

Here is a couple of examples to substantiate my point: 
 1) Diggby Ioane spear / tip tackles a player and gets suspended for six weeks. 
2) Butch James clears a ruck with his shoulder and gets four weeks. 
3) James Haskell lands two punches and gets at first three weeks, later extended to four weeks. 
4) Ashley Johnson and Deon Fourie started a fight that ended with just about all the players on the field involved. They both got off the field yellow cards, after the incident was white carded. 

Now the first two instances were dangerous play and the bans are pretty much in line with the infringements of dangerous play. The last two however doesn't make any sense. The message being sent to youngsters are that it
is ok to start a fight or even land a couple of punches but stay away from dangerous play. 
 
In my view if a player as much as throws a punch he should be suspended for 3 months minimum and should the punch connect, 6 months. This is for a fist or open hand. Slap a huge fine on him as well. This will send the  message that any form of fighting on a rugby field will not be tolerated. Haskell, Johnson and Fourie deserved a hell of a lot more than what they got. They are grown men that should know better. 
  
The school match that got stopped happened a week after the
Stormers/Cheetahs incident. So SARU before taking harsh decisive action against
youngsters, first clear our top rugby competitions from this kind of behaviour.
You will notice less incidents of this sort at school level. And if it happens,
I say: "Go for it and suspend the culprit for as long as possible, no matter his
age or the level he is playing at."


But
this is just my view.............

We have been hearing this since November 2011 and every time the Kings are given assurance as well as the current 5 franchises. Now I don't know about the rest of South Africa's rugby fans, but I'm getting tired of this. And I'm not going to beat a dead horse, but I need to say this: The Kings will not perform any better than the Lions. In fact I believe they will be far worse off and that giving them 1 or even two seasons and then going to 
relegation/promotion play-offs will be bad for SA rugby. 
 
What I can't understand is why SARU doesn't just admit to parliament, the fans and themselves that they made a promise they can't keep and that the Kings will have to wait until 2015 to see if SANZAR will expand and allow them in. Is it really that difficult to do?

SANZAR CEO, Greg Peters, made it clear that Super Rugby will not have a 16th team till at least 2016 as the current deals and contracts only expire at the end of 2015. So my question and that of everybody else is still: "How is SARU going to get the Kings in with out letting another franchise or franchises suffer?" Answer is quite simple in my view: "They can't." 
 
No matter how hard they try they will either have to convince two franchises to merge or they will have to drop one in place of the Kings. And this has been clear for a long time. Yes the Lions are clear favourites to be dropped or they will have to merge. The Lions has made it clear they are not prepared to do either as it will not be in their best interest. 
 
So SARU is still sitting with a rather big dilemma and one that will not just go away no matter how hard they wish it too. Keeping on making promises they can't keep is not helping them at all and just makes they look
sillier by the minute. They are digging the hole deeper and deeper and it is not going to be easy to get out of it. 

Now I won't ask if they are smoking anything as it is clearly not the case. If they had they might have dreamt up a solution by now. It does however seem that they are suffering from a very heavy concussion from hitting their heads against the same stone wall every couple of weeks. Either that or they have severe memory loss and can't remember that they have made these promises already and had been told it is not possible. 
 
In my view they are acting like a bunch of politicians that keeps making promises just before an election. This way they keep everybody happy at that moment and get the votes, only to renegade on them later.  In afrikaans we have a saying: "Jy is 'n regte Ja-Broer", for someone making promises they can't keep. Loosely translated: "You are a real yes brother.". SARU seems to be "Ja-Broers", they tell everybody what they want to hear and through that protect only themselves. 

Someone or something is going to get hurt before this whole drama has played out. I just hope that it is not South African rugby in the end. Because the way this is going it will be. 
  
This is just my view.................