Colourful Springbok coach Peter de Villiers' world currently has only two shades - black and white. If you criticise a non-white (black) player or official, you are a racist. If you criticise a white person in his team you are okay.

The Bok coach has certainly not taken kindly to those questioning his ongoing support for out of form players like Earl Rose and Ricky Januarie - likening those who do criticise them to racists.

In fact De Villiers took exception to media questions about Januarie's form and lack of fitness, firing back angrily at the critics at a media gathering.

He felt that too much is being made of "one" mistake being made of Januarie, while other players made many more.

"I'm not concerned about Ricky's form," De Villiers said of a clearly overweight scrumhalf, who has struggled to regain the form that saw him score a match-winning try against the All Blacks in Dunedin last year.

"He made one blunder, but so did a few other players.

"What I learned in South Africa is if you take your car to a garage and the owner is a black man and they mess it up, you never go back to that garage.

"If the owner is white, you say 'ag, sorry', they made a mistake and you go back again. That is how some people live their lives in this country."

De Villiers said the public outcry over some of his selections don't concern him.

"I respect people and their opinions, but I don't have to listen to them," he said, adding: "Their opinion is just that, an opinion. I can't listen to the opinions of 43 million people, because then I won't know where I am."

De Villiers also felt the need to do a retake on his decision to clear his bench in the first Test, which saw the Boks lose a 19-point (26-7) advantage and needing to hang on desperately for a win.

In the immediate aftermath of the Test in Durban De Villiers said he may have erred with the rash of replacements.

Now he feels he waited too long.

"I heard the papers went mad," De Villiers said about the reaction to his replacements at the weekend.

"Sorry for them. Do they know we won the match? We've taken 12 years to beat the Lions and if we beat them by one point or 20 points it does not matter, I will rejoice," De Villiers told a news conference.

"I was replacing Springboks with Springboks, not with schoolboys. I made the decision to substitute them because I felt we needed to inject some pace and energy into the game. In any rugby match, there is a period where players go to sleep, so you want to inject new energy.

"Looking back, I maybe took too long to make the changes as we had already gone into a defensive mode. I could have put two new guys on straight away, and then a few more a bit later. But again, I'm very happy we won the game," De Villiers added.

365

RSS
Digg
de.li.cious
facebook