Jean de Villiers issues proposal to World Rugby after Springboks v All Blacks controversy to prevent future Rassie Erasmus ‘gamesmanship’
Springboks head coach Rassie Erasmus and an inset of Jean de Villiers.
Springboks legend Jean de Villiers believes that World Rugby should consider allowing countries to name their teams later after last week’s controversy.
Under current regulations, Test 23s must be named, at the latest, 48 hours before kick-off, which is why most are announced on a Thursday before a Saturday game.
Rassie Erasmus often takes a different route and, in matches two and three against the All Blacks, he announced the South Africa squad on Monday.
Springboks team naming controversy
However, there has much debate after the Cape Town clash as Erasmus made five changes following the original selection.
Most controversially, the final alterations came just an hour before kick-off with the entire front-row being switched.
That is not allowed for the Rugby World Cup, but it was evidently acceptable for Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series.
Some have accused the Boks boss of going against the ‘spirit of the game’, but De Villiers suggests World Rugby could take a leaf out of football’s book to stop any future controversy.
“The question I want to ask is, is it not worth like in football where you only announce your team two hours prior to the game? You only have to give it then. Imagine that,” he said on the Boks Unpacked podcast.
“You can go on Monday and say: ‘This is the team I’m looking at selecting’.”
Fellow former Springbok Schalk Burger joined him on the show and stated: “Cricket teams get announced by the captain after the toss”, and De Villiers reckons “that’s more the way to go. Even now, the fact that we are talking about it shows that it creates talkability.”
Burger did caveat De Villiers’ suggestion by saying that naming a team before the day of the game does itself create debate.
“I think World Rugby does it because the opposite is true for them. It’s got to be out on a Thursday so that they can build and hype storylines for the Saturday,” the ex-loose forward said.
“I don’t know if that’s true, but I think that is what’s happening.
“There’s a cut-off date that you’ve got to announce your team and I think why World Rugby has it is to create narratives, head-to-heads, whatever.”
Sir Steve Hansen’s damning verdict on Rassie Erasmus’ selection antics: ‘Name it when you can’
Lack of ‘rugby values’
As for the recent controversy, De Villiers did not have any issues with Erasmus’ antics but admitted that rugby has “lost a lot of” those core values of the game.
“It doesn’t matter who the coach is, the question should be, are you allowed to do it or not? If he wasn’t allowed to do it then surely they would have blocked him,” he said.
“If he wasn’t allowed to do it, they blocked him and they still did it, he would have been fined.”
Burger then chimed in, adding: “The tricky part about our game is it’s a pro game with amateur values, it’s always had amateur values, but there’s so much riding on it, gamesmanship becomes a part of it.
“I’ve never been one to play around with teamsheets. We always do this, we try and select Rassie’s teams and we never get it right, so there was a bit of gamesmanship from Rassie.
“Was it mind games? Or whether it’s a gut feel on the day, or on the Friday thinking, ‘we’ve got to swap it around’.
“Our man of the match wasn’t even in the selected 23, Cheslin was a late addition on Friday. Obviously, you can’t prevent Handre Pollard pulling out.
“It gives us something to talk about but I’ve never sweated the small stuff. Even if I was playing for New Zealand, the fact there’s been four changes in the starting line-up, it wouldn’t bother me at all.”
