Div: It's war and you die
2008-07-18 13:07
Perth - The only thing predictable about new Springboks coach Peter de Villiers is his unpredictability.
Labelled a "puppet'' by former All Black Craig Dowd in the lead-up to last week's Tri-Nations Test in Dunedin, de Villiers showed he was pulling all of the strings with a famous 30-28 upset over New Zealand.
Now de Villiers, the first black man to coach the Springboks, is hell bent on claiming the scalp of the Wallabies in Saturday Tri-Nations clash in Perth.
But if the pressure of backing up his team's historic win over the All Blacks is hanging over his head, de Villiers certainly isn't showing it.
In a bizarre press conference on Friday, de Villiers declared war on the Wallabies, prayed to wake up alive on Saturday morning, suggested his team would attempt to break the rules against Australia and even urged his fellow South Africans to join the "party'' whenever the Springboks posted a win.
Yep, welcome to the de Villiers show, where the No. 1 priority is to make sure his players are enjoying life.
And it must be said - so far, so good.
'Heavenly glory'
"What we try to tell them is when you point your finger into the sky, don't concentrate on the finger because you'll miss all the heavenly glory out there,'' a philosophical de Villiers said.
"Concentrate on the heavenly glory that you can bring and make yourselves so fulfilled.
"The one thing that we as a management team and a coaching team emphasise more than anything else is the enjoyment of rugby and for us rugby is not our life, rugby is part of our life.''
Coaches are normally keen to keep famous victories under wraps - not so de Villiers.
"We went wild, wild, wild - some of the guys went wilder than that,'' he said of the win over New Zealand.
"South Africa are normally great people and we'll take the bitter with the sweet.
'We've got enough stuff'
"It's only the guys who don't feel part of that bitter or that sweet that will always moan and groan and say 'why do they go so wild?"
"Join in, we've got enough stuff to share with you."
But now that the partying is over, for the meantime anyway, de Villiers has made a call to arms against an Australian side still hurting from their quarter-final exit to England at last year's World Cup.
"Everybody focuses on New Zealand falling out of the World Cup - Australia did, too, and I think they've also got a point to prove,'' de Villiers said.
"So we will be aware of the threats they can pose to us but, then again, it's war and you die.''
And de Villiers also had this message to relay to the Australians about how his team would act under the ELVs.
"Look at life, too, laws are there to be broken and maybe that's what our intention is on Saturday, to go break those laws," he said.
- Rugby Heaven