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PdV - Manage top Boks carefully
Monday, November 30
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Springbok coach Peter de Villiers says a strategy needs to be adopted urgently to ensure that the country's top rugby players are carefully managed over the next two seasons and leading into the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
De Villiers was commenting after the end of the Springboks' Northern hemisphere tour that concluded with 10-15 loss to Ireland in Dublin on Saturday.
Some of the squad members returned from Europe on Monday but a host of players have remained in London for the Barbarians match against the All Blacks next weekend.
"It is imperative that we monitor the players training and playing load with their longer term well being in mind," said De Villiers.
"This (2009) has been a very long season and it is evident that many players are mentally and physically fatigued.
"The biggest concern, however, is the cumulative effect of the amount of rugby that Springbok players have played over the past three years, as we know that this puts them at risk to injury in the following year.
"In order to get best out of our players for 2011 we will have to manage their training and playing times during 2010.”
De Villiers said that SA Rugby would soon hold a workshop with the medical and conditioning staff at the Provincial Unions to discuss how the country can get the best out of the players whilst also ensuring their longer term well being.
"A number of players have played over 2000 minutes of rugby this year encompassing the Vodacom Super 14, Castle South Africa 2009 Lions Series, Vodacom Tri-Nations and Absa Currie Cup.
"We need a unified approach to address this and a host of other matters relevant to the welfare of our top players.”
On the 2009 tour, De Villiers said that whilst results had not gone South Africa's way it had provided a valuable insight into the challenges faced in the next two years as well as into the quality of young players coming through the ranks.
"It is never nice to lose but we have learnt a lot from this tour. Regardless of the disappointing end to the year you cannot take away the successes that made this team the best in the world in 2009.
"We have been able to identify our key focus areas for next year and we have been able to identify some of the players who will take the Springboks forward after 2011," De Villiers said.
Springbok captain John Smit added: "Although we did not achieve all of our goals on this tour, this team can hold its heads high for what has been achieved over the past year.
"It is a privilege to be part of such a special group of players and I have no doubt that they will put the disappointment behind them and be back stronger and more determined in 2010," Smit said.
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We have always suffered from, Plan A is to smash 'em, paln B is to smash 'em harder...teams know if you can come to the party physically and frustrate the boks for large parts of the game you can go along way to winning.
It is a worry that a player as important as Spies is quite injury prone. Not as bad as that Berrick Barnes but.
He misses the EOYT because he's got an injured finger and now he's suddenly injury-prone? Comeon man, seriously.
This end of year tour I think was a complete failure, not in the sense the team itself but as history now shows, the boks could only win 1 out 5. If they said we are going to rest 10 players and bring in the best players from Currie Cup for reward for the performances, the result would not have mattered.
I don't think they would have the same opportunity next year to do this. What if we have a really bad year next year, which is possible as the players may not recover in time.
PDV job is on the line, would he take the chance of resting players?
Or Roids
rest 3-4 players in the june internationals. bakkies, victor,du preez, and beast.
rest 3-4 players in the home leg of the tri-nations. john, steyn, spies and fourie.
reswt 3-4 players in the away leg of tri-nations. bismark, burger, olivier and habana.
rest 3-4 players in the last stages of the curry-cup. kirchner, pietersen, brussouw and bekker. meaning these guys should not play for their unions .
again rest 4-5 of your FORWARDS for the end of year tour.
just a thought.
glad piet helium is trying to do something about it.
also we should make use of our oversee's based players during this period cos this will keep us competitive and sharp.
this way we create more depth in each position. it's gonna be exciting times for SA rugby next year.
The thing that worries me more about SA rugby is our depth of players who can step up to Bok level because for me that was the biggest eye opener of this tour. Wynand Olivier, Andries Bekker, Francois Hougaard, Jean Deysel & Zane Kirchner have shown they still have a long way to go before they can even come close to the standards achieved by the last world cup boks. But I also think a couple of players like Wynand Olivier & Andries Bekker have shown that they just don’t have what it takes to step up to the next level.