Relationships under pressure

The World-Cup winning Springbok flyhalf Butch James and his sweetheart Julia Westbrook on Saturday exchanged vows in a private ceremony at the Lynton Hall estate in Pennington. Pieter de Villiers and the Super 15 coaches of South Africa also exchanged vows late in 2010 to marry the interests of players with the demands of Super Rugby and the World Cup tournament.

But whether this might be a relationship with a blissful ending is difficult to comprehend.

De Villiers is hoping that the franchise coaches will assist him in managing the key World Cup players differently during the Super 15 season.

“I had a meeting with the coaches because we need to manage certain players differently. We have to rely on the integrity of the Super rugby franchises. Some have no sponsor so one would not want to short-change them, but the coaches know what is expected,” De Villiers told the Sunday Times.

De Villiers’s Great Expectations might turn out to be Ambitious (and unfulfilled) Expectations.

In 2010, several key Springboks, including Fourie du Preez, were injured during the Super 14 campaign. The franchise coaches generally turned a blind eye to the plea by the Bok management then. Why would 2011 be different?

Also, the format of the Super 15 competition is one that will test the physical attributes of the best athletes. The proliferation of the local derbies could be a detrimental factor to the fitness of the Springboks. During 2010 there were only four local derbies per team. This year there will be eight.

Super Rugby (the Super15) will in future run until July in a World Cup year and until August in non-World Cup years. Super Rugby fans will see 125 matches instead of 94, with at least 40 matches played in each of the SANZAR countries.

Teams will play each team in their own conference twice - home and away--  but in the other two conferences they will only play four of the five teams. Therefore, the Bulls for example could miss playing the Crusaders and the Melbourne Rebels but the Crusaders play the Blues and the other New Zealand teams twice in the regular season.

Teams will play eight domestic matches and eight away matches for a total of 16 round-robin games.

De Villiers admits the eight local derbies are a massive source of concern. “I am worried. You are going to have the local teams playing each other home and away in high-intensity clashes. Our rivalry is different.

“It worries me because the guys are going to get involved in intense competition and they are also going to be drained psychologically,” said De Villiers.

It is easy requesting the franchise coaches to release their top players from key matches, but how do you convince the Bulls to release Du Preez, Victor Matfield, Pierre Spies, Bakkies Botha en Morné Steyn for the extended play-offs and the matches that will determine the final log before the play-offs.

It is possible for a world-class franchise like the Bulls or the Sharks to still rest some players, but it would be virtually impossible for the Cheetahs and the Lions to do the same. They simply do not possess the same depth.

Sure, we are very sympathetic to the plea by De Villiers, but appealing to Naka Drotské to release the talismatic figure and captain  Juan Smith for a crucial match, is like requesting al-Qaeda to surrender Obama bin Laden to the security forces of the United States. It is not going to happen.

The only way out of this dilemma is for the South African Rugby Union to have a veto on the use if their contracted players and to prescribe to the franchises on the number of Super Rugby matches they are allowed to play.

It would make the South African Rugby Union extremely unpopular with, for example, Stormers fans, who want to see Jacque Fourie and Schalk Burger on home turf play against the Lions in a local derby.

But Springbok rugby might be the ultimate winner, with the World Cup looming in September.

How do you marry the opinion of sport scientists like Prof Tim Noakes that your top players should only play 23 to 28 games a year when they are involved in 16 Super 15 matches before the play-off stages start? And remember, there are four Tri Nations matches also scheduled before the World Cup.

If the plea by De Villiers (to manage his Springboks conservatively) is not well received and endorsed by the local franchise-coaches, it will be a setback to South Africa’s campaign of defending the Webb Ellis Trophy in 2011 at the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand.