Loose Pass

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with South Africa. Is there anything else in world rugby to talk about right now?

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with South Africa. I mean, is there anything else in world rugby to talk about right now?

Saturday's extraordinary Test had a welter of talking points on the pitch, most of which have been done to death on our chat forum.

We know Victor Matfield is one of the all-time greatest ball-playing locks. We know Australia are inconsistent. We know what Kurtley Beale was doing just before the ball came out of nowhere and clonked him on the nut just before South Africa's third try.

Off the pitch there were moments of intrigue too, as across all manner of media the barometer suddenly swing away from defending the national team. In the space of eighty minutes, a nation appeared to fall in on itself.

The South African match commentators are right up there among the most one-eyed of the lot. Mathew Peace and Bob Skinstad could allude – convincingly – to South Africa having been robbed of a game-swinging penalty during the pre-match coin toss if it were required. But early in the second half, as David Pocock reached over a ruck and pulled off a miraculous turnover which had 'penalty against' stamped all over it to the casual observer, something particularly odd happened.

South Africa were penalised moments afterwards, and the TV screen flicked dutifully to the replay of Pocock's steal. You anticipated almost with rising ire the criticism of the officials and/or Pocock, the bemoaning of South Africa being harshly treated, the general diatribe on the incompetence of northern referees.

It never came. Instead, we got a blow-by-blow account of the arrival of the players, a brief pause as Pocock's arm reached out and grabbed the ball, and then these immortal words: “That is a good steal. He's got that absolutely right.” Pearce and Skinstad turned Wallaby!

There is a point to this moment, which I shall come to.

Before I do, we'll stay on the television theme though, and mention the interaction with the coaching team. There's been an irritating trend for vacuous half-time interviews with breathless players creeping into TV coverage around the world, two silly questions fired off by people ill-qualified to be asking them and answers that have a 'why on earth do we have to do this' tone between every line.

This time we got a South African coach, looking equally out of breath. The interviewer hardly needed to ask a question. Dick Muir proceeded to deliver, with great poise, a long list of things South Africa needed to do better, things they were capable of, things which would, if done better, win them the game even from eighteen points down.

A better than average half-time interview to be sure, but what a fascinating piece of PR! A public attempt to calm down several million TV viewers who could have been forgiven for throwing things at the television during that extraordinary first half, to convince the angry fans that all was still under control (not all that far from the truth as it turned out). P.Divvy's not the best at PR as we all know, but someone in SA Rugby's management does at least seem to have a brain.

Sticking to that man De Villiers, what an interesting moment there was as Jannie du Plessis attempted gamely to stay on the pitch despite his knee injury.

The cameras panned up to the commentary box, where De Villiers could be seen venting not inconsiderable spleen at the situation. Misunderstandings do happen, but dare we suggest that De Villiers almost wanted Du Plessis off and CJ van der Linde on? Du Plessis did not cover himself in glory during the game. Dare we infer further that South Africa's current coach seems to be becoming more and more isolated in his role and less and less in control?

De Villiers will now face the music from his employers, who are now understandably rather irritated at how last year's Tri-Nations have slumped so desperately – and as to why it is so utterly obvious that they simply are not fit enough.

But one of those employers is Oregan Hoskins, and while we all gleefully sharpen knives ready to take our pound of flesh from De Villiers' imminent rollocking, I want to make this point particularly strongly: I will not be terribly sad to see De Villiers go. I am not convinced he is a good ambassador for the game or his country and I don't think I'll find it in myself to forgive his revolting defence of Schalk Burger's gouge during the B&I Lions tour.

But I will be decidedly happy to see Hoskins go, as and when he does. De Villiers has been fighting a constant battle against sceptics from the start, sceptics who were given limitless supplies of ammunition by Hoskins himself during the press conference announcing De Villiers' appointment when he openly admitted that De Villiers' appointment had been a politically-motivated one.

Since then he has been wriggling his way out of all responsibility for De Villiers' misgivings and is now about to deliver a boss's telling off to his politically-appointed coach. He's even castigated De Villiers for criticising officials, then been part of an SA Rugby committee that asked for a judicial review of on-pitch decisions against South Africa!

If there is a place where the buck should stop, it should be at Hoskins' feet.

And you get a feeling a buck will soon stop somewhere, perhaps even as soon as next week, which brings me back to my TV commentators.

Fans will boo teams and coaches. Journalists love nothing more than sledgehammer criticism. Union Presidents are duty-bound to sound like they are constantly reviewing and being critical. But when you've lost your national TV commentators, that's when you'd probably think it's time to go wouldn't you?

By Richard Anderson