Beast: Peter Got Lucky

Legendary prop Tendai Mtawarira believes Peter de Villiers wasn’t very effective during his stint as Springbok coach.

De Villiers was the Bok head coach from 2008-11. The Springboks won 30 of their 48 matches under his reign and secured the Tri-Nations title and a series win over the British & Irish Lions in 2009.

But in an extract from his soon-to-be released autobiography, Beast, the 33-year-old Mtawarira – who made his Test debut under De Villiers in 2008 – reveals that De Villiers didn’t contribute much to the team’s success and that he was rather lucky to have inherited the core of Jake White’s side.

‘He was a fantastic coach of the Junior Springboks, but I think at the high level he was probably lucky that a very good group of players was handed over to him,’ Mtawarira writes in the book.

‘His methods and approach didn’t really work with the Springboks, and as players we had to be careful what we said to the media. What you said would get back to Peter and affect your place in the team. The media did not like Peter and thought he was a bit of a clown.

‘There’s no doubt that he was happy to be at the forefront of a team that could operate on its own steam. Most of the work was done by the players, with [assistant coaches] Dick [Muir] and [Gary] Gold very influential.’

SARugbyMag.com

This is old news.

Try to keep up will ya?

You read Beast's book before it was released? You have good connections PLF! 

Thank you ... you obviously don't.

Organhuffer so PDV got lucky - totally agree. BUT note you want to criticize Rassie but how much was his 50% win rate due to factors not attributable to bad coaching?

José was out-coached by Ledesma, Cheika and then bumbled his biggest moment. He ran out of ideas quickly on tour. By the EOYT the team was looking stale. José is the kind of coach who likes to throw spagetti at the wall until something sticks. 

Lets put it this way, Coetzee's 2017 was better than José's 2018, and that was good enough to get Coetzee fired. How then should we gush over José?

Haaaahahahahahaaaa!!1

Yeah ... Coetzee was an incredible coach.

Why we let him go I will never understand.

Who knows ... he may be reappointed come years end.

This is very old news.

Released on 18 June.

Click here to read

I only saw it posted posted today. 

all good cherrub.

Pieter de Villiers was the coach in name only the team coached itself and selected themselves - result the bugger-up in the 2011 WC,

Was he better than Meyyer - a bit  but not much.   Meyer was totally clueless about backline play and his team selection for the 2015 WC was a disgrace.  Was he better than Coetzee - no one could be worse than Coetzee was.   . 

Meyer and Peter both have better records than J-Raz and Coetzee put together. 

By the way, it was J-Raz coaching the 2011 WC team. Remember? The mainline Boks were in an emergency training session in SA whilst the rest played the away leg of the TNs. Then they played full strength for the home games. It was Rassie's stuff up in the World Cup with new attacking and defensive systems. 


Mike of the Clevers running into another gaff...

The 2011 Bok team was one of the best ever, but stupid strategy, over confidence and Brycie cost us against Aussie ...but mostly stupid...with all that territory and posession, Morné should have broken Jannie de Beer's drop goal record...

Haaaaaaaaaaahahahahahaaaa!! So true, Mike.

Snorre didn't even try and he beat the All Blacks and won the Tri Nations.

Meyer gave it his best shot and didn't come close to anything Snorre accomplished.

Oh wait ... Meyer did manage to do something that no other Bok coach could ... not in our his tory ... ever ...

He lost to Japan.

That surely says it all.