beefy Bismarck du Plessis

Profundity is not usually associated with the gnarled practitioners of the front row underworld, but yesterday we had beefy Bismarck du Plessis uttering: “Show me a player content to sit on the bench and I will show you a liar.”

The Springboks have relocated from the busy CBD of the capital city of Wellington to the sleepy surrounds of tranquil Taupo, a bucolic lakeside town in the heart of the North Island and hardly fertile territory for an insurrection from the hardy hooker.

Du Plessis is simply being frank and answering honestly a question put to him about the joys and/or travails of the bench. He has an aversion to wearing the No 16 jersey, you see, but will do it wholeheartedly for the team cause, and the Namibians can thank the south west African rugby gods that he is giving them a wide berth this week (Chiliboy Ralepelle will be on the bench).

“I don’t want to be seen as an impact player. I want to be regarded as a hooker, but Peter (De Villiers) asked me to fulfil a role for the first two games and I hope myself and the other subs contributed significantly to the victories.”

What is it about warming the woodwork that rankles with battleship Bismarck?

“The worst part about sitting on bench is, well, sitting on the bench! You do the warm-up with the starting XV, then you cool down for 60 minutes, then have to warm up again … For a rugby player warming up for a match is the worst part of the week. You are tight after a hard week’s training and anxious to get on the field … but to have to do it twice …”

At this World Cup, the 27-year-old has been reaping glowing plaudits from luminaries such as Sean Fitzpatrick and media as miserly in their praise of South Africans as England’s Fleet Street.

What does he make of the personal praise, and how does he feel about the criticism of the Boks?

“The only paper I read is the yellow pages section in Landbou Weekblad and Farmers Weekly, that is it as far as I go when it comes to the written press,” he laughed politely, but you can be sure he was being all truth and no jest.

“When I was younger and looking to make rugby a career I took advice from the father of one of my best friends from my school days in Bloemfontein,” he explained. “That man was Martiens le Roux and he told me to ignore the media and to identify a few wise men that I respected and admired, and to take advice and criticism from only them. That is how I operate.”

Le Roux was a highly regarded tighthead prop for the Springboks in the early ‘80s and played 176 games for Free State, including their win in the Currie Cup final of 1976. He played eight Tests in an era when the Boks barely played, and the Boks won seven of those Tests, including a series win over the British Lions. He was killed in a car crash in 2006, two weeks before the Cheetahs won their first Currie Cup since that famous day in ‘76.

It was put to Bismarck that the Boks’ defence of their title had grown tougher still because of Ireland’s shock win over Australia at the weekend, but he was not overly concerned.

“People get too carried away with assumptions about who is going to play who in the (knock-out stages) of the World Cup,” he smiled. “Everyone has it all mapped out, and every World Cup assumptions are proved wrong. You can’t apply mathematics to an event such as this because there is more to it than form. That is why it is special.

“In 2007, before we even left South Africa we were supposedly going to play Wales in the quarter-finals but ended up playing Fiji, and very nearly lost,” he continued, warming to the subject. “This World Cup it was said we would play Ireland in the quarters, so what has happened to that?!

“Now there is a new set of assumptions about who is going to play who. Well, I am sure that the Wallabies’ defeat is not the last of the upsets, and then ther will be another set of predictions … World Cup history confirms this. So we are not getting worked up about things that might never happen …”

The only assumption anyone can make, according to the 40-cap veteran, is that a team has to win seven games in seven weeks to win the World Cup.

“That is what you have to do if you want to be the best in the world. The path ahead will inevitably chop and change as you proceed as teams come and go but ultimately it comes down to seven games …”

by MIKE GREENAWAY IN TAUPO