Peter de Villiers is getting his knickers in a knot about his captain John Smit

Peter de Villiers is getting his knickers in a knot about his captain John Smit both prematurely and needlessly, for the answer to the conundrum he speaks of is laid before him every weekend in Super Rugby.

Simply do what the Sharks are doing. That is the answer to the question he is so intent on putting out to the media – “How can I pick John for the World Cup when he is not playing hooker?”

When you have a player so uniquely versatile as Smit – no other player in recollection can play tighthead, hooher and loosehead at Test level – who is also arguably the world’s best captain, and a player as exceptional as Bismarck du Plessis, you surely look at what both can collectively do for the team, and cash in on your good fortune at having both at your disposal at the same time.

Don’t try and pick one or other – make it work to your advantage or, as Julius Malema might add, “a Boer maak a plan”.

Except in this case it has been a Kiwi, in that the Plumtrees are proud Taranaki farmers. Come to mention it, Bismarck and Jannie du Plessis are passionate dairy farmers and the pair drive the three and half hours to their beloved Bethehem herd every half-gap they get. It has probably helped the Sharks in hanging on to the much-hunted brothers that Cape Town (or Toulon for that matter) is in a totally different travel bracket to Durban-Bethehem … but now we are seriously digressing, although it has been fun.

So back to Smitty and Bismarck. Smitty has been proven to be one of the best hookers the world has seen since Jake White prophetically and wisely changed him from tighthead prop to hooker way back in 2000, when Jake was assistant coach to Huge Reece-Edwards at the Sharks. That move was one of the few bright things to come out of a disastrous season for the Sharks.

I recall very clearly Jake saying at the time: “I am telling you now that if John Smit remains at prop it is doubtful anybody will recall his name in 10 years from now given the number of props we have in this country, but if he changes to hooker, he will become a great.”

Good on ya Jake, as Eddie Jones would say, you were spot on.

And almost ten years later Peter de Villiers changed Smit back to prop, at the end of the victorious 2009 season which saw the Boks win five out of six Tri-Nations games hot on the heels of the series triumph against the Lions.

And that was in reaction to the growing emergence of the Mighty Bismarck. So Div must not forget that this prop business with Smitty started with him.

Smit, with the decorum we have grown to associate with a revered gentleman of the game, graciously accepted the challenge of stepping aside and reinventing himself in a tighthead prop position he had not played since a youth.

Smit’s first game there was against Wales in Cardiff in 2008 (he had a very good game against a tough Welsh front row) but as fate would decree it, two minutes into the next tour game, against Scotland, Bismarck badly tore a hamstring, and Smit was back at hooker.

He was the hooker for the entire 2009 season, and back at prop in 2010 through until the end of the Tri-Nations, when he underwent neck surgery.

In 2011 he is captain of the Sharks and has played every position in the front row while leading the team superbly in one form or another, even if at times Stefan Terblanche has been the on-field captain.

Honestly, why should things be different with the Springboks?

Instead of making Table Mountain into Everest, De Villiers should embrace the fact that he has been blessed with simultaneously having world-renowned players in Sreemit and Du Plessis at his disposal and, if it is with his cerebral capacity, he must advance it to the benefit of South Africa rather than regard is as a simple surmise of “Bismarck or John!”

by Mike Greenaway