Publications
Partners
To the Akker van der Merwe fans still hoping the sheer weight of their indignation will change Rassie Erasmus’ decision not to pick him for the end-of-year tour, the Springbok side isn’t a fantasy league team.
Conventional and social media has seethed all week – with some calling the Sharks hooker’s omission a disgrace – at the “injustice” meted out to what appears to be everyone’s favourite reserve hooker, especially in the immediate aftermath of a man-of-the-match performance in the Currie Cup final.
If I’m honest, it’s understandable that many were up in arms over the man affectionately known as the Angry Warthog not being rushed to the airport along with the other players involved in the final to join the Boks in Europe.
When there was talk of there being a crisis at hooker with Malcolm Marx injured before Erasmus chose his first squad as Bok coach, Van der Merwe was one of the players to respond to the challenge by stringing together man-of-the-match performances in Super Rugby.
Van der Merwe has consistently worked himself to a standstill by availing himself for yet another carry and doing his best Marx impression over the ball when he has had opportunities to play in a highly rotational environment at the Sharks.
What has got to most is that the seemingly unfashionable 27-year-old from Vanderbijlpark has been left behind at the expense of an essentially retired player 10 years his senior in Schalk Brits. Having retired at the end of the English season in May, Brits has played one game – against England – since coming out of retirement.
Some might argue that Brits, whose main claim to fame is a magical career after South African rugby had basically rejected him as being too small to be a hooker, hasn’t had the kind of Victor Matfield-esque career with the Boks that would justify his recall at such an advanced age.
But Erasmus, who would counter that Brits didn’t get a fair shake in the past with the Boks, is clearly looking for something different in Brits, a player as distinct in outlook and playing style from Van der Merwe – basically a poor man’s Marx – as you can imagine.
The Bok coach has extolled the virtues of Brits’ value as an older dressing room figure, which has been drowned out by queries of why not have him as part of the coaching staff, then? But, in every team, there’s always a coach’s pick, and Brits would appear to be it.
If that sounds a little too entitled, Erasmus has earned the right to a left-field pick by dint of having improved the Boks’ fortunes from where they have been in recent years, even if the rest of us can’t quite see the worth of Brits’ deft footwork and offloading outside the match-day squad of 23.
The big argument proffered by Van der Merwe’s fans is that he could have benefited from the experience of touring the northern hemisphere, but would he have played if he was in the squad?
Ask the many players who have carried tackling bags across Europe on the end-of-year tour if it improved their game and the answer would be a resounding no.
The bigger point here is that, while being selected is a democratic right, being on form doesn’t turn it into a birthright. A player can tick all the boxes he wants to, but if said boxes don’t amount to the kind of player a coach wants in his team, there’s little anyone can do about it.
In all the time I’ve written about rugby, I’ve never seen a Springbok Fans’ XV trot on to the field to start a test on any given Saturday.
As it is, if it were up to some, Erasmus would also have had to consider Lionel Cronjé as one of his fly halfs on the basis of his great game for the World XV against Japan in a Barbarian game where there was zero pressure, forgetting the fact that most of them don’t even know where Cronjé is plying his trade these days.
We keep imploring Bok coaches to be true to themselves when on the job, and then we turn on them when that means not picking our favourites.
Follow me on Twitter @Simxabanisa, sports@citypress.co.za
