Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer
Cape Town - There are many similarities between
Jean de Villiers and Conrad Smith, not least the fact that they are the
respective, widely-lauded 'brains' of the Springbok and All Black backlines.
Both are also yeoman servants of the Test arena,
as evidenced by the fact that De Villiers sports 93 caps for South Africa over
the course of some 12 years and Smith 75 from around 10 years of international
duty thus far.
For the record, the latter will join De Villiers
in 32-year-old status on Saturday.
The sands of time should really be dictating
that they are relatively long shots for another crack at a World Cup – the 2015
one in England and Wales – but these midfield magicians almost appear immune to
decline.
Less than two years out from the RWC get-together,
De Villiers and Smith are arguably as influential as they have ever been and
can pretty confidently be tipped, based on champagne Castle Rugby Championship
form and elsewhere this season, to make the cut as valuable elements of their
teams’ armoury.
Or will they both?
I ask the question because one of them – and
unfortunately it is not our own national treasure De Villiers – is going to
have a clear advantage as things stand to preserve his shelf life to that
red-letter year.
Smith ended the pulsating Ellis Park title
decider last Saturday not only victorious (though it was not for lack of trying
by the similarly majestic Bok skipper De Villiers) but also satisfied in the
knowledge that his presumably fairly battered body had just begun one of those
fashionable New Zealand 'sabbaticals' of several months – a tasty offshoot of
central contracting in that country of key Test figures.
So he will play no part in the dead-rubber (and
frankly stupid, stale-beer?) extra Bledisloe Cup game against Australia in less
than a fortnight, and also sit out the All Blacks’ end-of-year tour of the
northern hemisphere, only making a re-appearance into high-level rugby early in
the next Super Rugby season.
It is just the sort of recharge a veteran
combatant in the modern game needs to ensure fresh physical zest and mental
vitality down the line, but at this stage there seems no special plan to make
any similar allowances for De Villiers.
He is caught between the old South African
phenomenon of a rock and a hard place: the ever-insatiable, dual needs of
"club and country", if you like.
Thank goodness, a morsel of sanity prevailed on
Wednesday when De Villiers was named on the bench only by Allister
Coetzee for
the influential last Currie Cup round-robin clash of the season against the
Sharks in Durban on Saturday night.
He has been so glaringly over-played at all
levels this year that this must feel just a bit like the granting of a Balinese
or Mauritian holiday to him (though watch old Murphy’s Law intervene ... don’t
discount that he is forced onto the park for the rest of the derby in the
fourth minute!).
And if he does just get a happy maximum of, say,
20-25 minutes of game-time, there may well be a naive belief that he has
cleared his body and mind of fatigue, voila, and will be raring to go for the
semis and possible final and then also be fit as a fiddle for the Boks’
three-game European expedition.
Of course you can’t blame De Villiers, as loyal
a "Province man" as you will find, if he has an instinctive, highly
competitive eye on Currie Cup glory even through the fog of 2013 weariness.
He has something of a big-event injury jinx, is
desperate to experience lifting either the Super Rugby or Currie Cup trophies
at (or at least for) Newlands, and tragically missed out on the glow of last
year’s slightly unexpected domestic conquest in Durban because he had a
hamstring problem and only travelled to the showpiece as a motivating, but
non-playing element of the WP squad.
Deep down, even Bok coach Heyneke
Meyer probably
knows that his skipper could really do with all of November off, but long-term
considerations will be steamrollered once more, no doubt, by the shorter-term
employer and public demand for optimum win-percentage stats by the national
coach.
The one hope I have is that perhaps De Villiers
won’t play all three Tests this time: looking at the itinerary, you would like
to think that the Scotland middle game, in particular, could feasibly be won
without De Villiers at No 12 or at the front of the troops as they come out
from the Murrayfield tunnel.
Apart from the fact that there is only a six-day
turnaround from the Scottish clash to the tour finale against France in Paris,
which would also be no special help to the ageing De Villiers, it could also
represent a perfect opportunity to gauge the 80-minute credentials of young Jan
Serfontein, whose nine Bok caps thus far have all been as a substitute.
At least that would look something like the
start of a necessary (surely?) plan to cocoon the captain from time to time in
the quest to push him safely through to RWC 2015.
Not too long ago, in an extended interview with
SARU boss Jurie
Roux, remember, he
had told Sport24 (and before the All Blacks’ retention of the Championship):
"It (central contracting) is a no-brainer ... it gives them an advantage.
"It will probably keep them No 1 until we
get it right."
Meanwhile, the uncomfortable fact remains that
as far as 'management' to the next World Cup is concerned, Conrad Smith has the
jump on Jean de Villiers already, alas ...
