Springbok coach Peter de Villiers’s loyalty towards many of his senior soldiers may just come back to haunt him at the World Cup later in 2011.

Article from IOL

De Villiers named his group of 23 contracted Springbok players last week, and the men who are set to lose out the most from De Villiers’s misguided loyalty once again will be a number of Stormers players. It appears as if, from 2009 onwards, De Villiers has some issue with either the Stormers management or their players, as he has stuck to mainly Bulls and Sharks in his Bok squads since.

The biggest omission from the contracted list was Stormers star Gio Aplon. The little dynamite from Hawston thrilled all Western Province, Stormers and Springbok fans almost every time he took to the field in 2010, yet he can’t score a Bok contract!

It is interesting to note that in his first Springbok squad of 2008, De Villiers had picked mainly Stormers players in the group, but in the past two years especially, he has opted to overlook many deserving Cape-based players.

Instead, the likes of Bulls players Wynand Olivier, Bakkies Botha and Pierre Spies continue to be rewarded despite seldom impressing in Bok jerseys. As well as Olivier has played in Super Rugby in recent seasons, he has played 32 Tests and struggled to make an impact at that level.

Botha has been involved in so many unsavoury off-the-ball incidents that he is quickly eroding the “hardebaard” image he so successfully built up over the years. Continuing to give him a Springbok contract indicates that the Springbok coach condones his thuggery. Why can’t he prove himself worthy of a place in the squad again in the Super Rugby competition?

Spies is the ultimate enigma at No 8. For all his rippling muscles, he is far from the “tough-guy athlete” reputation he has. He tends to disappear when the going gets tough in games.

Another player lucky to get a Bok contract is centre Adrian Jacobs. He has barely played in the past 12 months due to injury, and rarely starts for the Sharks in Super Rugby. Yet he is still looked after. If he gets a contract, then why not just Ricky Januarie too?

One could even argue that Heinrich Brüssow shouldn’t have got a contract either, as he has been injured for about a year now. He should prove himself again in Super Rugby. After two great performances for the Cheetahs, Brüssow is injured again. What if he can’t make it to the World Cup?

So many Stormers players deserved to have been in the Bok squad in the past 18 months. Peter Grant has proven himself over and over again, yet can’t get a sniff of the No 10 jersey; No 8 Duane Vermeulen is another consistent performer, and he “owned” Spies and Ryan Kankowski (not to mention Willem Alberts and Bismarck du Plessis) in the past few weeks; Francois Louw was inexplicably dropped and made the scapegoat for a couple of Tri-Nations defeats overseas after winning a few Man-of-the-Match awards in his first few Tests, and will probably leave for English club Bath if he misses out on Bok selection again later in 2011.

Aplon and Juan de Jongh were also badly treated by the Springbok selection panel last season – getting dropped after performing excellently in the previous Test.

De Villiers said in reply to a question last week about why several players who haven’t performed well got contracts was that “the senior guys will leave if they don’t have any security. So, I didn’t make pure rugby decisions there, I made a holistic decision to secure most of the senior guys to keep them here in South Africa so that we can judge them playing against each other here”.

So, is the Bok coach being held to ransom? What kind of message does that send out to other South African players? It is believed that the Bulls players, led by Victor Matfield and Fourie du Preez, prefer a more conservative Bok gameplan compared to Schalk Burger and his Stormers players, who would like to attack more. So, clearly Big Vic is winning that battle!

De Villiers’s insistence on getting Francois Steyn back to this country as a fullback also indicates that Aplon is unlikely to get a look-in at Test level. And what a shame that would be.

Stormers players shouldn’t hold their breath when Bok coach makes his calls