I was stunned that Stormers No 8 Evan Roos wasn’t invited to today’s Springboks alignment camp in Durban.
Stormers coach John Dobson was equally mystified that Roos, among the most in-form loose forwards in the competition, didn’t make the list. “Relax,” many have written on social media. His time will come. He will be in the next alignment squad … and so on …
My response: When has the national coaching leadership become beyond challenge? Why can’t questions be asked when a bloody good 22-year-old, who is the talk of the competition, doesn’t make a very significant national gathering?
SA Rugby’s national director of rugby Rassie Erasmus and Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber have won a World Cup and a British & Irish Lions series, and for that many believe their rugby word is gospel.
But equally, they have lost some pretty big matches in between — against the All Blacks, against Australia and against England. Not everything they do is bulletproof and, in this instance, I believe they lost a massive opportunity to add much-needed positivity to the local rugby scene.
Nienaber and Erasmus could have sent an emphatic message to overseas-based South African players that there are player options for Test rugby within SA. Most importantly, it would have sent a message of hope and encouragement to the locally-based players that you can make it into the Springboks via a domestic team playing in an international tournament.
You don’t have to go offshore to make it. Cheslin Kolbe, no matter what he did for the Stormers, was not a consideration for the Springboks.
He went to Toulouse, lit up France with the same magic he did at Newlands, and he found his way into a Bok Test line-up.
There has been a big push from SA’s regional coaches for players to remain in the country and for those overseas to come back. Bulls coach Jake White has campaigned, through an opinion piece, that the Springboks selection should be exclusive to players in SA.
I disagree entirely with White on this one and believe the best available players should be eligible, regardless of where they are based. Equally, I do believe the locally-based players, outside of the established 2019 group, deserve a fair shot at national selection.
I don’t see this happening with Erasmus and Nienaber, and the Bok set-up is more of a closed shop than an open window for opportunity. In expressing my view on social media earlier in the week, the retort was that Bok coaches could leave out Roos because of the abundance of loose-forward talent.
My response was that they didn’t have to leave anyone out because it was an alignment camp. I tweeted that it would have been the greatest motivation to pick an in-form kid, get one-on-one time with the player, let him know the Bok expectation and then send him back to the United Rugby Championship and hope for an inspiring final six weeks.
It would have been an all-win situation, whereas there was no winner in identifying just nine out of the 46 players on display in Cape Town yesterday for the Stormers clash with the Bulls.
Erasmus and Nienaber, since returning from Ireland in 2018, have got so much right, but in this instance they got it very wrong. The duo, buoyed by their 2019 and 2021 success, operate in an insular bubble that is tolerated because they won the World Cup.
It doesn’t make for a healthy long-term prognosis, especially when there is so little interaction and talk about players between them and regional coaches.
The Springboks will beat Wales in July’s Test series, regardless of who they pick, which doesn’t necessarily make those selections World Cup-winning ones.
• Mark Keohane is the founder of Keo.co.za, a multiple award-winning sports writer and the digital content director at Highbury Media. Twitter @mark_keohane
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