News

De Villiers full of excuses

August 23 2008

Springbok coach Peter de Villiers was full of excuses after his side slumped to a 27-15 defeat at the hands of Australia on Saturday.

The defeat, the second at home in as many weeks, leaves De Villiers under a huge amount of pressure, and anything but a resounding win next week could see his tenure cut short.

De Villiers listed a long line of excuses as to why his team did not function for a second week running.

"The crowd is unhappy, rightfully so, they have every right to be unhappy," he said.

"They want to back a winning side, but we never go out there to lose on purpose and it's a new playing style I'm trying to get out there.

"Rome wasn't built in a day and I ask the people to be patient, to give us more time.

"When you win you don't do soul searching like when you lose.

"But I recognise the guys are a bit flat due to the amount of rugby they have played.

"There has been a lot of Super 14 and Test rugby, this may have led to our poor execution and decision making, which was just not there."

That said, both New Zealand and Australia are in the same boat as the Springboks, and you don't see their coaches offering weak excuses for defeats.

De Villiers went on to say that had his side fired in the first half, when they had a glut of chances, it would have been a different story.

"When you make as many silly mistakes as we did you can't win a Test match," he continued.

"It isn't nice to lose. We had enough chances in the first half but we just didn't finish them off. If we did it could have been different."

Despite a stinging criticism of his senior players in the week, De Villiers stopped short at suggesting there would be major changes ahead of next week's re-match.

"Well if we replace them now with one game left you would have to start from scratch," he said.

"I will have to sleep on that one and assess the injuries on Sunday, I may have to make forced changes so we'll see."