David Williams
Fourie du Preez is a deserving winner of the SA Player of the Year award and it would not be hard to argue that he is the best player in the world at the moment.
Perhaps “best” is not the most appropriate concept on which to base an argument. How can you say Du Preez is better at being a scrumhalf than Victor Matfield is at being a lock? A more useful criterion would be the value of a player to his side. By that measure Du Preez must rate very highly.
To deal with the basic skills first, he is an accomplished passer and kicker of the ball, and has the classic scrumhalf’s personality: impatient, gritty, cocky, and a shrewd judge of a referee’s likes and dislikes.
Beyond that, Du Preez is an extraordinary reader of a game. He sees quicker than most what is “on” and when it is worth taking a risk. An illustration of this was his perfect cross-kick to set up a Bulls try in Saturday’s Currie Cup final against the Cheetahs. He knows when to take a quick penalty, and when to slow things down. He does not need to be made captain to be influential — indeed, there is a sense in which such an instinctively brilliant player needs to be kept away from the cares and distractions of captaincy.
Of all the current Springbok and Bulls players, Du Preez is the one whose absence would have the greatest negative effect on his team’s performance. He has been largely free from injury, which means we’re in danger of taking him for granted.
In the Daily Telegraph, in anticipation of the autumn internationals, there is a series of articles in which the paper’s rugby writers identify who they think is the best player in the world at present.
Former England lock Paul Ackford says it’s All Black captain Richie McCaw, “whose success rate is phenomenal, not just as a hunter of midfield backs but as a wrecking ball who forces turnovers. And he has done this for nine seasons in an area of the game that has become brutal to the point of masochism.”
All that is true, but Ackford overlooks the fact that McCaw’s teams — the Crusaders and the All Blacks — hold neither the Super 14 trophy nor the World Cup: we do. And Du Preez played a leading role in both SA triumphs, as well as being a key factor in the relentless drive by the Bulls to Currie Cup victory.
Before the final, one of the best SA provincial teams in history paused in silence to honour the memory of the captain of one of the worst Springbok teams. Basie Vivier, who was the oldest living Springbok captain, led the 1956 team in New Zealand. The story goes that Vivier got the captaincy only because of a punch thrown by one of the two leading candidates, Salty du Rand (Transvaal), at the other, Jan Pickard (Western Province), after a trials game.
That serves to remind us how intense provincial rivalries have always been in SA rugby — but also that the players somehow get amnesia about their local loyalties when they are picked to play together for their country.
Danie Craven, who coached the 1956 team, believed that the selectors erred in not selecting Pickard or Du Rand as captain (though both toured New Zealand). Craven saw the thrown punch as regrettable, but an indication both of healthy competitiveness and the intensity of feeling among those aspiring to play for SA.
In the event Vivier, who was certainly past his best as a player, seemed to unite the team behind him and they were happy tourists (Vivier himself enjoyed leading songs around the piano) in the three-and-a-half months they were away from home.
But they lost the series 3-1 — the first time SA had gone down in a series to New Zealand, after four previous encounters (two drawn, two won by SA). It was also the first time in more than half a century that a Springbok team had lost a series to anyone.
Team spirit is important, and both the Bulls and the Cheetahs showed it in abundance on Saturday at Loftus Versfeld. But the really good teams are the ones dominated by truly outstanding individuals. That was where the Bulls had the edge in the Currie Cup — they have a critical mass of genius to call on: Du Preez, Matfield, Bakkies Botha, Morne Steyn, Pierre Spies.
Let’s just hope the ones who are now touring with the Boks have enough steam left to deal with France and the Six Nations champions, Ireland.
