Heyneke Meyer as Springbok coach in 2013

It is five years since Heyneke Meyer applied for the job of Springbok coach and, despite coming top of the class when the candidates sat examinations for the position, he lost out to Peter de Villiers, who sources that cannot be quoted say was towards the bottom of the rankings.

De Villiers got the job and he was always on a hiding to nothing when the Saru president admitted at De Villiers’ inaugural address, so to speak, that factors other than rugby had played a part in the appointment.

Say what you like about De Villiers, that is a heck of a ball and chain to put around the leg of the new coach, and one he probably never got rid of, because despite his very good success ratio over his four years, supporters would say it was because of the quality of the team he inherited from Jake White, not because of his expertise as coach. It was in spite of Peter de Villiers, not because of him.

At the same time, spare a thought for the coach who really ought to have got the job in 2008 when White was not asked to apply for his job, despite having won the World Cup.

Meyer had every right to be bloody disappointed. He had just won the Super Rugby trophy with the Bulls and had built up an impressive dynasty with the Pretoria team after joining them in 2000 from the Eagles. That’s right the South Western District Eagles. He spent three years there doing his coaching apprenticeship, and there can be few tougher places to cut your coaching teeth than in a region that has no resources and dubious administration.

And at the Northern Bulls 13 years ago, Meyer did not have it much better. They came last in the Super 12 and Meyer was under huge pressure, but he hung in, built systems in the region, backed his players and seven years later, at Kings Park against the Sharks, they won the first of three Super Rugby titles.

Last year Meyer belatedly got the Springbok job after, ironically, Peter de Villiers was not asked to reapply for his job. The 46-year-old Meyer had the toughest of first years given that he had only received his management team a few weeks before the three-Test series against England.

He had almost no foundation on which to prepare for that series. Almost the entire pack that had done duty in New Zealand in 2011 had gone – the likes of John Smit, Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha, Danie Rossouw, Gurthro Steenkamp and Schalk Burger – and he had to start from scratch.

It was reminiscent of how White had started in 2004 after the disaster of the 2003 World Cup. At that stage the likes of Matfield, Bakkies, Schalk, Juan Smith, Smit and Rossouw were babies, and most made their debuts at that forgettable World Cup.

But you have to start somewhere, and while Rudolf Straueli in 2003 was an unfortunate coach who found himself in no-mans-land in terms of talented players able to fight a realistic World Cup campaign, White was able to start again in 2004 and build towards 2007.

And that is what the calculated Meyer is doing in the 2013 quadrangular series as he keeps one eye on the 2015 World Cup.

He has brought in a number of young backline players that could well be front-line players in 2015, the likes, of Willie le Roux, Jan Serfontein, JJ Engelbrecht and Jano Vermaak. We should be excited rather than worried about the rawness of the back division. Meyer knows what he is doing and deserves our wholehearted-backing.

BY Mike Greenaway