Peter de Villiers will give Sonny Bill Williams a run !

A perusal of New Zealand’s rugby websites this week suggests that Peter de Villiers will give Sonny Bill Williams a run for his money when it comes to who will be the biggest media draw card at the Rugby World Cup in the Land of the Long White Shroud in September and October.

Sonny Bill, you see, has learned to become circumspect in his utterances to the press after half a decade in the unforgiving world of Rugby League in Australia prior to his Rugby Union time at Toulon in France, while our shrinking violet Springbok coach continues to be flamboyant and a stranger to nipping things in the bud when he has made a faux pas, if you will forgive the botanical theme.

De Villiers this week reportedly suggested that Sonny Bill Williams will be “found out” unless he changes the way he plays and ditches his unconventional method of offloading passes (which invariably results in line-breaks and subsequent tries, by the way). Furthermore, he is setting a bad example for rugby’s global youth …

Are we seriously to be lulled into believing this is “a cunning plan”, as the benign simpleton Baldric used to say in BBC’s Blackadder series or is De Villiers being serious when he says that Williams’ back-hand offloads are teaching kids bad tricks.
“He is doing everything wrong according to rugby principles,” De Villiers said this week.
“I mean, back-hand passes shouldn’t be the norm but they are becoming the norm. Now everybody wants to do this kind of nonsense and they forget about the basic principles of the game,” the Springbok coach said.
No fine.
Well, I don’t want to get into a critique of P Divvy so early in a World Cup year. After all, he is our leader … But then again, to hell with it.

Our coach earlier this season said that the Crusaders and All Blacks’ style of rugby was good for “entertainment” but was unlikely to win them the World Cup, which got Kiwi backs up and now that Sonny Bill has been laughed off as a ‘pretender’ and a bad example to the youth, the New Zealand media will be waiting for the Boks, and so will Sonny Bill.

Why wave a red flag to a bull, or should that be a Bill?

Until now, the characteristically reticent Kiwis haven’t had much to say about Jake White’s successor, apart from former All Black prop Craig Dowd’s comment in 2008 that Div was a “puppet” while it has been the Aussies who have said on air that Div is “a clown” (former Wallabies hooker Brandon Cannon on their rugby show equivalent of ‘Boots and All’).

In New Zealand yesterday, poor Schalk Burger had to field questions about the Bok coach’s comments on Williams after the Stormers had trained in Hamilton ahead of their opening tour match against the Chiefs on Saturday, but he opted for charm based on the honesty of having had to deal with Williams last week at Newlands.

“”How do you stop a guy like that? I’m not too sure. We (the Stormers) didn’t stop him too well did we? So we’ll just wait for another team to stop him and we might pick up one or two tips,” said Burger, showing due respect to Williams.

“I need some of that glue he’s got stuck to his right hand – the ball just seems to get stuck to his pinky,” Burger said, displaying the diplomacy that evades his national coach.

by Mike Greenaway