While the news coming out of the Bok camp seem positive, you have to ask what prompted such drastic changes?

The Australian and New Zealand media had quite a field day on Monday following the South Africa’s top franchise, the Stormers, humiliating loss on Saturday.

A couple of weeks ago Springbok coach, Peter de Villiers, proclaimed publicly that he would like to mould the Boks’ approach around that of the Stormers given their success in the Super Rugby competition, but as yet another Stormers scrum were destroyed, or a line-out lost, or an attacking opportunity fluffed, the face of De Villiers that was shown on the television screen for everyone to see hardly looked like that of a man that feels confident about what he believed the ingredients were for a successful defense of the Rugby World Cup.

It is quite ironic actually… Seeing the Stormers (and previously the Sharks) scrum destroyed by the Crusaders, I wonder if De Villiers were perhaps thinking the sacking of Os du Randt was such a great idea…

Of course the announcement of WP Rugby’s Director of Rugby, Rassie Erasmus, and the Stormers defence coach, Jacques Nienaber, as consultants to the Springbok team was met with much fan-fare. Not that they are bad additions to the Springbok management team, but given the timing and lottery with consultants coming and going, I cannot help but sense a bit of panic creeping into the Springbok ranks.

It is not the addition or termination of consultants which worries me, it is the way it is done.

Firstly, with the addition of Erasmus as technical guru and Nienaber as defence coach, just what roles does Muir and Gold perform within this setup?

Where it was once only a rumour of De Villiers having lost faith in his assistants or not trusting them, it has now been all but confirmed by sacked scrum consultant Os du Randt in a recent interview with SA Rugby Magazine. Du Randt, when asked about the details around his sacking mentioned that when he joined, De Villiers asked him to promise that he will always be open and honest with him because he believed that individuals within the Bok management group are lying to him or working against him. Only for Du Randt himself to be sacked via an email with no explanation from either De Villiers or SA Rugby as to why, other than some shady accusation of misbehaving on tour.

The question then remains, how does one expect the Springbok setup to run smoothly if there is such an obvious level of distrust between the role players within its own management? How does one expect the team to function as a unit when the coaches clearly cannot work together? Is the addition of Erasmus and Nienaber really such a genius move by SA Rugby or is it a last ditch effort to save a sinking ship? Most importantly, why allow people, or ego’s, to remain in key areas of the coaching group when the well being of Springbok rugby is clearly not first priority?

I don’t know about you, but I am getting a very uneasy feeling of de ja vu looking at the Springbok setup at the moment, apart from calling a Kamp Staaldraad, it seems to be the exact same situation Springbok rugby found itself in 8 years ago where ego’s and personal agendas caused divisions and ultimately destroyed the team.

The addition of Coetzee, Nienaber and Erasmus might seem positive on the face of it, but for my money they will not change a damn thing within this team for the simple reason that the problem is not so much the lack of expertise they now bring, it is the fact there is quite simply no trust between the current management members of Springbok rugby to start with, and the inability of SA Rugby to fix the problem at its source.