Failure to plan is planning to fail, or so the old saying goes.

This article is from Supersport by Brenden Nel

In a World Cup year, this is even more so, which makes Tuesday’s meeting between Springbok coach Peter de Villiers and the five Vodacom Super Rugby franchise coaches even more important when it comes to player welfare and a taxing season.

The yearly planning meeting is nothing new, but on Tuesday, when the coaches, managers and chief executives of the five Super Rugby franchises head to Cape Town to meet with De Villiers, the outcome is even more crucial than before.

Faced with a loaded schedule every year, there is always debate around how many matches the key Springbok personnel will need to play in order to be fresh and fit when the World Cup comes around in September.

But this year, this is even more so. The inaugural Vodacom Super Rugby competition is five weeks longer, and considering half the games will now be the physical bone-crunching derbies, the importance of player management will be even more of a debate at the meeting than before.

The Vodacom Tri-Nations series starts shortly after the Super Rugby competition and is followed almost immediately by the World Cup in New Zealand.

In 2007 Jake White and his management team left a number of stars out of the Tri-Nations away leg and it paid dividends when the squad arrived in France fresh, strong and marched to the World Cup title.

However, with five Super Rugby franchises protecting their own interests, and coaches who have their own jobs on the line, De Villiers may not get the entire buy in that he needs ahead of the competition.

De Villiers has never been one to give coaches an ultimatum or a number of games players must rest, but he will nevertheless be stressing the need to rotate players and ensure that his top crop of Springboks are fresh and rested when the Super Rugby season ends.

It creates a dilemma for Super Rugby coaches who live and die by their results, and while National teams manager Andy Marinos and De Villiers visited the franchises in December to outline their plans for the year in broad terms, this will be revealed more in detail on Tuesday.

Last week John Plumtree surprised many when he said there had been little direction from the national squad as to how to manage the players. On the other hand Lions coach John Mitchell made it clear that while they will consider the requests but that the Lions are his priority.

Some of the coaches believe it is unlikely that De Villiers will go into too much detail with them over resting periods.

But in a year where rest, rather than playing will define a World Cup campaign, the amount negotiated in Tuesday’s meeting may have a far-reaching consequence on whether or not the Springboks will return from New Zealand as World Champions.