Peter de Villiers laments the lack of a centralised contracting system for Springboks - Rugby
Peter De Villiers’, Springboks head coach, biggest concern just ahead of the Rugby World Cup (RWC) 2011 in September is the lack of a centralised selection management system similar to that of the New Zealand’s.
The urgency of this system to be adopted was urgently stressed by De Villiers after 21 members of the squad were pushed out of the Tri- Nations opening squad on account of injuries during recent matches. The injury list has left the team in disarray because
the limited time left before the RWC is not enough for pick the right players for the World Cup squad.
With the injury-toll coupled with the complete absence of a pool of potential rugby players to select, De Villiers stated, “Unless South Africa has a centralised contracting system there's little we can do to manage players.”
While speaking about the grave situation at hand, he mentioned that New Zealand is better off in this regard due to their centralised contracting system. All Blacks have the authority to oversee the amount of rugby the top players are playing and this keeps
players from being over worked or injured at critical times of the season.
He stated, "Unless we start with central contracting we can't compare apples with apples. At this moment we are far from that and we just have to make do with what we do in this country and it's worked for us up till now."
Also, it was confirmed by De Villiers that the extended season of the Super Rugby tournament is also responsible for the injured players. The Springboks coach reflected that lessons need to be learned from the recent Super Rugby tournament, as a 30-man squad
is not sufficient for such a tournament, which should be upgraded to a 40-man squad.
With the 2011 Tri-Nations tournament fixtures closing in, where South Africa will be combating Australia in Sydney on the July 23, the situation looks grave. Later, on July 30 the defending Champions New Zealand will face Springboks in Wellington. In the
face of this major tournament, Springboks have lost its top tier 21 players and De Villiers is placing the blame entirely on the lack of authority of the South Africa Rugby Union (SARU) to regulate the amount of rugby each player can play.
Even the Tri-Nations has modified the schedule to prevent players from burning out before the World Cup encounter this year in September. Instead of the conventional pattern where each team faces the opposing team thrice, this year it has encounters brought
down to two.
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