De Villiers: SA only please
Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:39
No foreigners thanks: Bok coach Peter de Villiers
Springbok coach Peter de Villiers wants there to be more trust offered to talented young players in South Africa rather than signing foreigners to play in the Super 14.
There is a growing concern in the country about the flyhalf depth available to the national team heading into the World Cup in New Zealand next year.
Currently in the South African Super 14 franchises there are two foreign flyhalves playing with Andy Goode and Carlos Spencer lining up for the Sharks and the Lions respectively.
If you then add Australian Matt Toomua's brief stint with Western Province during last year's Currie Cup it is clear that not enough young talent is being given the opportunity to grow into the crucial flyhalf berth at a high level of competition.
"If you look at what we saw at Craven Week in the last three year's, you can't tell me there are no flyhalves in South Africa who can grow in that role." De Villiers told Rugby365 at a media conference in Cape Town on Friday.
"The Wallabies have ten times less players than we have, but you don't see any other player than a Australian player playing Super 14. They rather lose heavily and trust their own players and the same player who was so bad three years ago is now the cornerstone in some of their teams.
"At Super 14 level that is where we want to develop our own players to be the best in the world, and if we had done that four years ago we would have had now five or six flyhalves with all the experience of Super 14 rugby.
"We have to instill some trust in our players.
"We losing so much talent because we don't trust our players," he added.
De Villiers is equally concerned about the repercussions that fielding non-South Africans in our local teams could have leading up to the World Cup itself.
With such a high volume of Bulls players likely to feature in the Springbok side it is only natural that there will be some cross-overs between the two teams, and player like Chris Jack and Spencer may have picked up some in-house secrets.
"What happened to Chris Jack - do you think the preparation that Province did to go play the Blue Bulls isn't what he is needing to go tell the All Blacks how the Springboks culture will be," De Villiers said
"The same with Carlos Spencer now - do you really think that Carlos Spencer overnight will become a South African by heart, and not want to see New Zealand win a World Cup in their own country?"
"There is only one way that you win a case in court before you go to court - that is if you know how the opposition think.
"We giving it away - we selling it - we paying them to take our secrets away," he added.
By Timmy Hancox
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