Those who were around in the late 1970s and 1980s may remember an advert that used to play at the cinemas and at the drive-inns, as well as on television and the radio: “You can stay as you are for the rest of your life, or you can change to Mainstay”.
It was catchy, and I well remember a university Rag magazine once doing their own take on that. They showed before and after pictures of someone who might have taken the advice that was offered – the first depicted an upstanding, well dressed individual sitting at a desk, the next showed him strewn across a gutter, a liquor bottle lying nearby.
I sometimes wonder if South African rugby administrators live in fear of that kind of change. That they are happier to muddle along with mediocrity safe in the knowledge that it will keep South African rugby middling and out of danger of falling completely off the tracks. In other words, they opt to stay as they are for the rest of their life, rather than take the risk that might be implicit in opting to go for something completely new and out of the ordinary that might galvanize the local game (not that for a moment am I suggesting there’s any positive side to liquor – it’s just the advert I’m drawing on) .
A lot of people in South African rugby are resistant to change, and I am referring to change of all sorts: the way the game is approached and played, transformation (Race based selection - of course we are resistant to this racism that means the best team is not on the park!!)and the willingness to do what other countries have done by embracing outside influence in the coaching box. (Other countries dont have transformation they simply select their best players!).
It is the dire need to step out of that trap when it comes to game-plan and outside influence that has me hoping that the approach or approaches that have reportedly been made to former Stormers coach Allister Coetzee to return from Japan to take charge of the Springboks are only part of the story.
I have nothing against Coetzee, and even predicted when he left the Stormers that he’d be back sooner than expected as coach of the national team. He is a good coach, and before his eight years of top-level experience as coach of Western Province and the Stormers, he served as an assistant coach on Jake White’s World Cup winning management team.
But the detail of Coetzee’s career in the Cape does not add up to something that suggests he is the cure for the ailments that have precipitated the drive to have Heyneke Meyer removed from his position as head coach. At least not on his own.
If you think back to how Coetzee was lambasted in the Cape media for the lack of imagination and flexibility to his team’s game-plan, then replacing Meyer, who stands pretty much accused of the same thing, with him doesn’t make so much sense. I preferred what I was hearing from some high ranking members of the Saru machinery before the Coetzee story came to light – namely that they were chasing after an overseas coach, with All Black assistant Wayne Smith the man targeted.
That, though, could still be the plan. I can’t see Smith moving to the Boks to be an assistant coach, but an experienced high-profile overseas coach as an assistant would go some way towards removing the reservations that should be in place about Coetzee taking over on his own. The Boks need a dynamic new angle and only an overseas coach who has experience of coaching the rugby that is required can do that.
It’s why to my mind John Mitchell is the only alternative to the departed Eddie Jones at the Stormers. People who tell me that Mitchell should be avoided because he’s supposedly difficult and a disciplinarian appear to be missing the point that the same things could have been said about Jones.
I’m in a difficult position when it comes to Mitchell because I worked closely with him on his book and have got to know him well subsequently and have thus seen the personal growth he has gone through since he last coached at the Lions in 2012. I still have his files at my house, and in them you can find copies of letters he wrote to people he clashed with asking for advice on how to deal with the challenges he faced in his previous coaching career should they crop up again.
Having written his book, I’m obviously also well versed on the problems that were beyond his control that led to the fall-out situations at the Lions and the Western Force. So I can’t get irritated with people who criticise him because they only know the surface of the Mitchell story.
For me, the fact that Mitchell has coached the attacking style the Stormers want to embrace, and has done it successfully at the All Blacks and at the Chiefs before that, makes him not just the top candidate for the Stormers job, but the only candidate. Unless there is another overseas coach in director of rugby Gert Smal’s sights that I don’t know about, he is the only one who fits the criteria that Smal himself spelt out.
If Mitchell didn’t get the Stormers job though he’d fit perfectly into my Bok coaching dream team as a high profile assistant coach.
It was when Rassie Erasmus was effectively the WP director of rugby, and later when Smal had assumed the same position, that Coetzee was at his best for the Stormers. His team scored a lot of tries in 2010, when the Stormers made the final and Erasmus was still working with him behind the scenes. And the attacking improvements of the WP Currie Cup team and the Stormers coincided with Smal’s arrival.
If you gave Erasmus, who possesses a rugby brain second to no-one, the job of team director and Mitchell or another top overseas coach was Coetzee’s assistant, then Coetzee could fly as a head coach and we could be optimistic about the next four-year cycle.(TRANSFORMATION AT ITS BEST - TAKE IN A MEDIOCRE COACH FOR TRANSFORMATION PURPOSES ADN THEN GET IN TWO REAL COACH ABOVE HIM AND UNDERPINING HIM! WAHTA FARCE!!)
The concept that a head coach should be developing a younger coaching group is a peculiarly South African concept. The All Black assistants aren’t young coaches being developed. They are all top experienced coaches in their own right, as are many of the other coaching groups on the international circuit. Not seeing that was one of Meyer’s biggest flaws. (I STRONGL;Y SUSPECT LOUBSCHER WAS A QUOTA APPOINTMENT FORCED ON MEYER! A LITTLE HONESTY HERE GAVIN!!!)
tHE POLITCAL SUCKING UP OF Gavin is nauseating but at least he does recognises the huge rugby brain of Rassie - highlighted by B eeno years ago.
