Early Days- but he has allready achieved the most succesful South Africa Super15 coach- taking the bulls from last to number one.
He seems to have the technical ability of Jake White and people management skills of the 1995 Coach.
He is surely better than Andrew Makraaf Schizophrenic, Harry Viljoen (2 days experience), Rodoelf Straulie(chicken murderer), and PDV the cleshay philosopher.
He would be if he could do what Christie did in 1995 and White did in 2007. It is a hard life out there - but Heyneke could if he sticks to his plan to play only the best and start blooding some new players with vast potential.
Sharkbok
You left out two coaches - Mallett and Du Plessis. Do not rate either - Du Plessis started off being in the same position as Meyer - building a new team. The second test against the Lions was lost - because Honiball of all people missed 3 easy try conversions at Kings Park and the referee - last time he ever blowed a test - was less capable than Bryce Lawrence. Then followed the amssive win in pretoria against the Aussies - 63 - 22 - but as soon as he got the combinations right - he was dropped as a coach and Mallett inherited the team and he could proceed with a top class team - but he was clueless about bringing in new players. Then came to crash - he became insufferable, fired his captain and was mainly responsible for lack of player development and the fiasco in the WC in 1999. Got fired in 2000 because he could not identify new players that could be broought into the team.
So let me rate the coaches from weakest to strongest:- strictly as coaches, not other shennanigans
1 Viljoen
2 Straueli
3 De Villiers
4 Mallett
5 Du Plessis
6 Markgraaff
Mike, I share your sentiments on Mallett. I have a suspicion that he leaned heavily on two guys in his set-up. Guess who? Heyneke Meyer, who was his forwards coach, and Jake White who was his technical assistant. Unfortunately for Jake, one of the guys in Nick's set-up did not see eye to eye with Jake. Mr Know-it-all Solomons, and he pushed for Nick to get rid of Jake, despite Nick's promise to Jake that he would also be in his team to the RWC. In the end Nick found a reason to get rid of Jake. Jake did not agree with the idea to leave out Andre Venter for a test against England, and Mallett fired him. That game eventually ended Nicks winning streak. More recenty he also came "warning" Heyneke about this, that and the other. Unlike a lot of people, I am no big fan of Mallett.
The irony is that he was the one who kick-started Heyneke's career when he appointed him as his asst coach at the Eagles when he was a young up and coming coach.
There is no doubting he will be better than Jake and PDV, he is in a different league
I for one am relieved that we finally have a decent coach, he still has to proof himself but there is no 4 year plan. I like the fact that he wants to win every game and not wait till the tri-nations or world cup. He seems to have a deep understanding of the players and clear communication of what he expects from them. Just hope that he doesn't get pulled into the media circus in the event that his team go through a dry patch.
I don't like concervative rugby or 10 man rugby, but what he did with the bulls team was a near miracle. I know that he has an atacking game in him and can get of the players when neeeded but he also know in order to win you need to do the basic right. Thats what i felt Jake lack, a plan B or C. Jake had one style of play and that was it.
These are the challenges for Meyer:
Beat the 17 run record of no defeats.
Win the Championship/Tri-nations 2 years in a row
Whitewash the all blacks in NZ
Whitewash the Wallabies in Aus
Win a grand slam tour at the end of the year
Make the boks the number 1 ranked team in the world for more than 3 months
Provide the best possible coaching to the boks, better than what they would receive anywhere in the world, making them better players for their unions.
I will always be a WP supporter but I believe if Meyer sticks to his guns and play winning rugby, develop new talent and make SA rugby strong, then we have a lot to look forward to.
Now we just need to get rid of Saru and we will be on our way.
There are going to be those that don't like Meyer, and they will find fault with him. But I really feel that he has not really done anything wrong so far. And his record with the Bulls speaks for itself. He has every chance of becoming our best coach ever!
Just for the record....it is IMPOSSIBLE for his every selection to satisfy every fan, so for those of you that are going to judge him because has left out a player that says good night to you from a poster on your wall, please keep things in perspective.
I reckon Meyer and his team easily have the potential to be the best ever...and I have been saying this for the last 5 years.
@clevermike
I honestly cannot fathom how you would rate MArkgraaf higher than Mallet?
LOL i think you are all alone on that one.
Firstly, Mallett is known for his insight and his tactical accumen.
Secondly, if a good coach uses his deputies well, I have absolutly no problem with that.
Henry used his deputies with aplomb... and openly admits it.
Jake used Coetzee and at a later stage Eddie Jones...
Does that make them lesser coaches?
Sheesh we love piling the expectations on ourselves and this is all after winning a scrappy match against a Pom team that has about as much imagination as the way the Scots play ...lol
However, Heyneke Meyer has the pedigree and the results but so do most coaches coming into this level of rugby have. I get so sceptical when we heap praise where praise has not been proven or earned. Yes he has done so at a national level with the Bulls but now its international level let him put a season under his sleeve before any accolades or expectations are announced - afterall we have seen many a failiure!!
GO THE BOKKIES!!!
In response to your Question, Will Heynecke be the best coach since readmission.
Answer - No. He will not, hwever, it is too early to say if he will be the best coach in the professional era.
My order since readmission, Based on the thing most people value - Win Percentage: So their Win percentage added.
Kitch Christie - 100%
Nick Mallet - 71%
Jake White - 66%
Pieter De Villiers - 62%
Andre Markgraaff - 61%
Harry Viljoen - 53%
Rudolph Straueli - 52%
Carel du Plessis - 37%
Iain McIntosh - 33%
John Williams - 20%
If you want to rate someone, rate them on facts, those are the facts. Based on winning percentage. Apart from the fact that Uncle Kitch never lost a game, well he wasn't in charge very long when sickness got him but he was also on of the most respected and well liked coaches ever.
Heynecke will never be a Kitch - However he has the potential to be a Mallet or Jake.
Of the above coaches two coaches inherited a very good team from their predecessors - in th caese of Mallet from Markgraaff and Du Plessis. Whilst the top players kept perfpoming he was a winning coach - but when he started his antics with the captaincy and replacement of oler players - his system collapsed despite all his so-called knowledge. De Villiers also inherited a top team - but he maanged to destroy it.
Percentages in this case is meaningless - since it has to also deal with what coaches inherited and what they did with the inheritance, How did they perform on their own insofar as teambuilding and replacement of players are concerned - that is the question. Based on facts - Mallett was in fact in the lower category of coaches. De Villers matched him in that respect as well.
Then based on your argument Mike the Answer remains obvious.
There is no way in hell that Heynecke will be the best coach since readmission.
Kitch Cristie Inherited a less than Mediocre team from Iain Macintosh who inhereted an even worse team from John Williams. and didn't lose a single test.
Heynecke will never be as good as Kitch. Very few coaches will ever.
Then the answer reamains.
I never said that about Meyer. i said that he could eventually be equal to the WC winning coaches - Christie and White and the signs are there that he could be - so lets hope for the best.
I think Saru has a really poor record of managing coaches. Just remember how Markgraaf lost his job. Du Plessis submitted a recording of Markgraaf making races comments and end up taking the job from him. So the pair of them really made life difficult for themselves and I personally believe that they didn't have right qualifications to be a bok coach.
As for Mallet, I do think he was a fantastic coach but not the best Manager. He made a really poor decision of dropping Teichman but he also had a lot of pressure to include Skinstad who was all the rave at the time. He simply had to find a space for Skinstad as Teichman wasn’t the best 8 in the country but a fantastic leader.
From that mistake Jake learned and used Smit as his captain, but then De Villiers hanged on to the guy for to long. So if Meyer can lean from these guys he would do well.
There is also a big difference between amateur days as to professional days, remember SA was in the wilderness for decades and lacked the experience to produce a test match winning team. After the 95 world cup rugby turned professional and SA was a bit slow of the mark but eventually caught up.
But yes, Mallets 17 run winning streak was an amazing time in SA Rugby. He did have an amazing squad of players. If you look at the pack and the backs, they were simply an incredible group of players who were all peaking at the same time of their careers. It was probably also some of the best rugby I have ever seen the boks play in my life. I remember watching a Tri-Nations game where the boks were trailing the All Blacks, I think it was Ellis Park and then completely caught up with them to beat them. And there was the French demolition, little Dalton powering ahead dragging a few Frenchman behind him.
Kingcorn
Sorry you are wrong about Du Plessis in this case - he had nothing to do with the racist recording - it was one of the Bester brothers that did it and not Du Plesis at all. The whole process was actually aimed at Lousi Luyt - who appointed Markgraaf as a coach. The game you referred to was in Durban in 1998 and the All Blacks were at one stage 23 - 3 ahead and ended up the All Blacks losing by one point. i was at the game and some of teh supporters walked off at half time - they did not see an amazing performance.
Mallett's problem was HR. He never spoke to his captain on the cell phone or any other way and when he fired Teichmann - the latter read about it in the papers. One of the major complaints of virtually all the players was his constant cursing while he was coaching. Ultimately the team he got after the departure of Du Plessis needed some player replacements and he came up with nothing eg Gaffie Du Toit - other than a series of losses in 1999 and 2000 - whereafter he was fired.
Clevermike, yest that was the game. Mallet was a great coach not a manager, that is what Coaches have to be now a days, Manager. The same as in Football where you have guys like ferguson who is the manager but decideds on team selection, player management and strategy. Coaching are done on certain areas. ie defence coach, scrum coach, kicking coach, attacking coach etc.
Perhaps the term coach should be changed to manager
Meyer looks to be a solid coach. In addition h eha srassie to draw on. He has roped in Pieter de Villiers to fix our underwhelming scrumming.
Essentially he seems to understand the Bok heritage and he has a very good talent pool to work with. The test match wins % is only a guide. A very good coach with a poor squad will not make too much of an impact etc. There is a good chance of Meyer going down in history as a great Bok coach. Time will tell.
Mike I am pleased you realise just how good Carel Du Plessis was. Man he had a bad deal.
As for Mallet he has many more years of experience now since his days of Bok coach so this must be taken into account when considering who is the best.
clevermikes comments are spot on in regards to du plessis. mallet took over a squad of players that was already built and blooded at the top level. if du plessis was given the amount of support jake and de villers got then the stats would have been totally different. to match up coaches is a hapless task because enviroments are totally different and winning % does not reflect on a lot of other factors. i think for a coach to be to have a longer winning stint over a longer period of time will reflect a lot better than the circus that saru went through after the 95 RWC. coaches were fired by the year. mallet to be honest has not done anything major when he took over at the boks after du plessis. and i still rate du plessis as a coach. he changed a lot of things and as a direct affect the boks played a lot better for it. he gave them the freedom to play. just a pity he is not involved at the higher level anymore. i think he can change the boring stormers into a winning team that plays proper rugby. not this robotic kick and bore your opposing team to death playing style
Carpetmuncher
Just one issue further. Du Plessis wanted to change the game plan of the team to go for higher trie scoring by the Springboks. In the game they played in Durban against the Lions - they scored three tries - none of which was converted by Honiball of all players with the result that they lost because of a referee that was dishing out penalties to the Lions. In the succeeding games against the Lions and the Aussies the trie scoring stats was even better.
That is why i liked Du Plessis as a coach - he knew back line play better than anyone in that category to date. In succeeding games Mallet did use the team assembled by his two predecessors - but he got lost after the English game at Twickenham - when he started to make changes to the team.
Hell we need coaching to achieve higher trie scoring ratios urgently. Maybe that could be achieved if Meyer cause Hougaard to improve his service to the backline and replace Morne Steyn.
i could not agree more clevermike. making a backline work is dark art but its not rocket science. we have the coaches do teach it but they are not being used.
mallet lived of the work that was done by du plessis and markgraff. those where in my view the dark ages of springbok rugby. if one has to compare those days with now it will be litterally chalk and cheese.
under the new ELV's the IRB is trying to change the way how rugby is played. whey want more attacking try scoring rugby. as such one needs to change ones style of play to suite that. that is why since the new ELV's teams like wales, AB the aussies ext are way more sucessfull because there way of playing to suited to that. n high ball posession attacking style of play. where they attack phase after phase. the results speak for themselves. walse 6 nations champs the AB RWC champs and the aussies almost there and there abouts. crusaders mulit super champs. the bottomline is if you want to be the best you have to attack aswell as you defend. we and the english are still spell bound by this rubbish robotic bash bash rugby (forward obsessed) then kick the ball away mentality. if has no place in modern rugby. the unions in SA forget that rugby is meant to entertain and if one looks at our super 15 teams there biggest problem is backline skils development. the only team that has n great backline is the cheetahs but they lack the depth in players and money to make a decent dig of it. there needs to be a major shift in playing style if we as bok supporters want to dominate the world in rugby. it al starts of how we approach the game. we bread a lot of big players. if we can teach them to be skill full and have coaches that understand how to make a backline run and function properally then we can dominate the world. if our forwards get matched up front we have no other weapons and that is were are biggest shortfall is, until that is fixed we can forget of being the best. we need proper backline coaches like eddie jones, du plessies john mitchell, david campese ext to breed new backline coaches and from there on in we can develop our backlines and round off our plans. in one looks in history the best bok teams are the one that had potent attacking backlines...1986 nz tour in south africa is also n great point. we dominated the nz side in size power speed and skills. i dont know what happend since then.
HM has been on record saying we dont have the backline players to compete with AB's backline players. i say rubbish we do we just dont have the technical coaches that understand how to coach en develop those backline skills. when we went down to the aussies in the 2011 RWC we out gunned them on attack. that is the potential we have. we can outrun the likes of the AB's and wallies. we just need to coach it and practice it. its there bloody use it. just imagine the level of rugby we can achieve if we can fuse our forward power with big skillfull quick backline players with the potential to score from anyware !!!! no team can stop that type of a onslaught no one. that is the level we need to achieve to be the greatest.
We'll have a better idea after Meyer loses a few matches. Jake had iron resolve, he stuck to his beliefs. Mallett, Destroyli, Viljoen and PdV changed as their fortune's changed. White is head and shoulders above that lot. And, as he is showing with the Brumbies, his RWC was no fluke. Meyer will be a very succesful coach, if he is eventually legitimately compared to Jake.
I am just curious, from all your argmunents, no-one answers the question. Everyone talks about all these coaches and how good they where and what not and all the coaches mentioned are from after the professional era. Not since readmission. the question was.
Will heyneke meyer be the Best Bok Coach since re-admission to Internationals.
not,
Will heyneke meyer be the Best Bok Coach since rugby turned professional.
So if you want to answer the second question, then yes all your debates are open. Un fortunately you are debating the wrong question.
You should only ask yourself if Heynecke will be better than Kitch. and you should answer with a clear resounding NO.
i agree mozart. jakes took the job when bok rugby was at a low point to. he also changed a lot of things in regards to how a coach is appointed and he changed a lot of structures. he is very much a guy that likes to surround himself with other technical advisors. eddie jones backroom staff ext all help him build the bok team up to the level they were at the RWC 2007. at the brumbies his advisors like gregan and larkham is also making a big difference. it takes a lot of foresight and courage to bring about change and he has loads of it. the only way to measure meyer is to go through the whole process again in about 4 years time i feel.
@ek is very tough to compare coaches from different era's. in terms of how you measure them with winning % then i dont hink HM can achive a 100 % winning record until he finishes. that feat is impossible to replicate over a extended period of time. the game only turm pro after kitch too so then the argument changes as well in regards to your heading. i feel a coach cant only be measured in winning %. there is alot of other factors that needs to be considered as well.
Hey carpetmuncher, we have several guys on here that have a prior claim to your nick.....Saffex and Aristokrat come to mind. But I like it, it has a certain swagger to it....welcome.
Spare a thought for Andre Markgraaf whom I think was not too bad. Certainly better than some of the more recent ones like Destroyli and PdV.
Some may remember Markgraaf as the Griquas coach and how they beat Buurman van Zyl's N-Tvl in the CC final with all time greats like Mof Myburg, Thys Lourens, Pierre Spies (Sr) and Firk du Preez in the team. The only player of note in the Griquas team was Dick Muir.This was to me enough proof that Markgraaf was a quality coach who could beat the country's best with a no-name team.
We must not forget that when Meyer became the Blue Bull's coach, it took him the best part of 5 years to get the team from the bottom of the SS log to become the champion team. I am sure he learned a lot in this time and will implement his winning recipe and culture quite quickly.
Deleted - duplicate of previous post.
@Carpet,
Yes i understand your question. But i find it shocking that inside the grounds of argument the best coach is left out, there is no argument. Kitch was not just the best off a 100% winning record. Remember he inherited a team from Iain McIntosh 30% winning record and John Williams before that 20% winning record. And turned that team into something tremendious. They weren't the most talented bunch, but they won as they where a team and respected their coach trememndiously. As i said before if you want to argue the best coach after the pro era go ahead. but the best coach since our return is a no brainer and no argument.
None of those coaches have the presence, or ability to pull a crap team out of the doldrums that he had, they don't come close, it is a no argument. The sad thing is just that If it wasn't for his health and he had to leave the job where do you think we might have been now.....
