News
PDV compares Carter to Naas Botha
August 11 2008
Springbok coach Peter de Villiers was at his soundbite-producing best on Monday providing some interesting insights into South Africa's attitude to selections, the Pumas, All Blacks scrum-halves and threat posed by a certain Dan Carter.
De Villiers arrived at Monday's press conference in Cape Town looking uncharacteristically irritated, but soon brightened up to produce some of the gems the press just love writing about.
The Springboks have been deprived of two key players, lock Bakkies Botha and centre Jaques Fourie, for their match against the All Blacks at Newlands on Saturday but De Villiers was able to see the silver lining around every cloud.
"I'm very close to my father and I'm going to lose him too one day. That's part of life. If you try change things in life that you can't change, you'll spend the whole day wondering why you were born," said De Villiers in reaction to Botha's injury.
"When something like this happens it's always an opportunity for someone else. Nothing in life happens by chance, it's all planned," said De Villiers in Afrikaans in his best impersonation of a church minister.
The Springboks looked decidedly out of sorts in the first half-hour against Argentina last Saturday, but De Villiers was ready to draw a positive to his side's erratic start.
"The one big plus is that fact the players were in a spot of bother on the field - they didn't control the game the way we thought we could do - but the fact that they could stand up, and in retrospect see that we can do it, if we only do our basics right, worked for us," he said.
"The big concern was the fact that individually they wanted to be the hero and wanted to win the game when it didn't go right.
"None of them did the basics right - if you look at simple mistakes that [players] made that impacted the guy next to him, and the guy next to him, and then everyone wanted to rectify it instead of going back and just doing the basics right.
"What we can take from [the game against Argentina] is that psychologically you have to be in the same frame of mind as your skill level. If you can't do that you're an unbalanced person. And an unbalanced person is an unbalanced rugby player.
"If you look down on people and you don't respect them then the same thing will happen to you in life. We saw that Italy beat Argentina and the guys knew that we could give them 60 points here.
"I think it's a South African thing, it's been there for years - that people look down on people and don't respect them. That kind of culture (of respect) we need to bring back into our lives. It's a biblical thing."
Right... anyway, the Springbok boss was under no illusions that things would be the same against the All Blacks at Newlands, comparing Dan Carter to legendary Springbok fly-half Naas Botha, who is widely recognised as having had the best boot the game has ever seen.
"The holes that came easily (against Argentina) won't be there. [The All Blacks] defensive structure is one of the best. With Carter there their kicking game is outstanding," he said.
"Carter takes us back to the era of Naas Botha when he could control the game with his boot. "
In 2005 Schalk Burger and Ricky Januarie hounded Dan Carter and managed to disrupt his game, but De Villiers feels that similar tactics won't work this time around.
"In 2005 Carter was not as experienced as he is now, and you don't go back and look at things like that now. With all the games that he's played, that experience that you don't buy at a [supermarket] on a Sunday. It comes from playing games under tremendous pressure.
"We tried a few things in Wellington and we could never put him off his game, and for us to go concentrate on a guy that is so strong [wouldn't work]."
Asked wether the Springboks' victory in Dunedin earlier this year would be used as a blue print for success, PDV said his side were only looking forward.
"If you look at the Wellington Test, we knew the frame of mind the All Blacks would be in coming to Dunedin," he commented.
"We knew exactly what was coming at us and we worked on the psychological part of it. But that Test is over and done with. Nothing from that Test will come back to help us or haunt us on Saturday."
De Villiers also said that if given the choice, he would rather have the All Blacks select Piri Weepu than Jimmy Cowan.
"I'd prefer if they used Weepu because he's a strong bugger and strong people like to overplay their hand and trust themselves more than their team-mates," he explained.
"Jimmy Cowan poses a threat by running and thinking and kicking and putting other people into holes and stuff like that. Cowan is streetwise, very very streetwise, and you need those kinds of streetwise players.
For all his praise of the All Blacks half-backs, De Villiers is confident that man-for-man, the home side have the ability to outplay their kiwi visitors.
"But then again we're playing all the All Blacks," he said.
"In Dunedin I knew we really had a chance to win the game when fourteen All Blacks stood and looked at one All Black to go win the game. Everybody looked to Carter to do something special and the difference is we have fifteen players [who can win the game]."
By Ross Hastie in Cape Town .