Under fire Peter De Villiers says First Test criticism is racist

Chris Jones
23 Jun 2009

Peter de Villiers launched an extraordinary defence of his tactics as he hit back at the "racist" critics who blasted him over the basic errors which almost cost South Africa the First Test. Having seen his team dismantle the Lions scrum, the Springboks head coach initiated a bewildering series of replacements on Saturday.

Hard man Bakkies Botha and centre Jean de Villiers were brought off midway through the second-half and they were soon followed by captain John Smit, fellow prop Tendai Mtawarira, who was doing all the damage, and scrum-half Fourie du Preez.

The switches unsettled the Springboks as they conceded two tries in the last 12 minutes and almost gifted the Lions another three before hanging on for a 26-21 victory.

De Villiers was blamed for the collapse but ahead of Saturday's Second Test in Pretoria the under-pressure boss is refusing to buckle, defending himself and his men.

The first non-white to coach the Springboks, De Villiers suggested that criticism directed at black scrum-half Ricky Januarie, who came on for Du Preez, was evidence of lingering racism in South African rugby.

"Ricky made one blunder but so did a few other players, too," said the coach. "What I've learned in South Africa is that if you take your car to a garage where the owner is a black man and he messes up then you'll never go back to that garage again. If the owner's a white man you say, 'ah, he made a mistake', and you go back.

"And that is how we live our life in this country, some people."

Du Preez lacked match fitness after being dropped by the Stormers during the Super 14 season but De Villiers insisted it was right to play him.

"If I listened to 43 million opinions, I believe I would be lost," said De Villiers. "I'm not concerned."

South African fans pinpointed how close De Villiers pushed the team towards defeat by his strategy which Smit made clear he did not support. The captain came back for the final four minutes to replace substitute prop Deon Carstens who had a shoulder injury, although there is a belief he was told to get off the pitch to allow the captain back on.

Smit said: "I was quite happy to get back on the field for those final minutes even though it wasn't part of the plan. I needed to calm the ship and be quite frank with the players that needed to get their hands on the ball because we had given so much possession away in the second half. We won a key line-out, forced a penalty and won."

De Villiers certainly knows his own mind when it comes to dealing with sceptics and having been told that his replacement strategy had angered many, he said: "I heard the papers went mad. Do they know we won the match? We've taken 12 years to beat the Lions and if we beat them by one point or 20 points it does not matter.

"I was replacing Springboks with Springboks, not with schoolboys. I made the decision to substitute them because I felt we needed to inject some pace and energy into the game.

"Looking back, I maybe took too long to make the changes. But again, I'm very happy we won the game."

De Villiers , in trying to explain himself, put the blame on those replacements by highlighting the fact they were capped players and should have done better. The obvious counter argument is that they shouldn't have been on the pitch at all.

De Villiers will be concerned about the fitness of Schalk Burger, the brilliant back-row forward who missed the First Test with a calf injury that the whole of South African rugby knew would keep him out of the game.

The coach, however, chose to spend his final press conference before the Test telling anyone who would listen that "60 per cent" of what the team were planning to produce revolved around Burger, who could be back on Saturday.

Boys on tour

The Lions have rallied round Phil Vickery following his battering by the Springbok front row in Saturday's First Test. However, the goodwill was in short supply when the players, including Wales hooker Matthew Rees, decided to relax with a few games of pool at the team hotel. London Wasps prop Vickery said: “How bad is this week becoming — now I have lost to Matthew at pool!”