Beale upbeat about Waratahs’ turnaround
SO KURTLEY BEALE believes the Waratahs can “shock the competition” this Super Rugby season. But if you look at their Super Rugby run last year, can Beale’s views be considered realistic or just wishful thinking?
The Australian team that managed only four wins in 15 games last season and found themselves in 16th spot in a then-18 team competition will kick-off their 2018 campaign against the Stormers on Saturday.
Surely it should be the easiest of the Stormers’ games on their three-match tour to Australasia, seeing that they face the Crusaders and the Highlanders after their fixture in Sydney? I guess. But the Stormers still need to take heed of Beale’s excitement about what his team can achieve this season. Speaking to the
the man who can create play from anywhere just as easily (and seemingly comfortably) as he can pose for a picture with Prince Harry in nothing but briefs and holding a beer, said: “There was a lot of experience back then in the pack and backs but if everyone can take all their experience and be on the same page, then we’ll give ourselves a good chance.”
“Skilfully, we can shock the competition. It’s a matter of everyone buying into the same thing and making sure everyone is on the same page. If that occurs, we’ll give ourselves a really good opportunity of success.
Beale seems pretty confident the Waratahs can drastically turn things around, and after missing out on Super Rugby action last year due to his time with Wasps, the 29-year-old is keen to flourish with his mates during the “exciting times’ that await them.
“We have a lot of young guys coming through with a lot of huge potential. It’s exciting times. I love playing in the sky blue jersey and it’s created a lot of memories. It only fits best to come back and do as much as I can for the club and try and make them one of the main teams of the competition.”
That’s some very optimistic thinking by the Wallabies playmaker, very optimistic indeed. But it certainly says enough for us to assume the 2014 champions will be fired up against the South Africans.
Now the Stormers should know pretty well that no team in the competition can be underestimated, and following their season-opener against the Jaguares at Newlands – a home performance that was far from perfect – I can’t exactly see them heading into the event at the Sydney Football Stadium sky-high on confidence.
And yes, the ‘Tahs 2017 season might have been a disaster, but let’s not forget about the men that could be running out onto the pitch for them on Saturday – the likes of Michael Hooper, Reds recruit Rob Simmons, Israel Folau and human steam train Taqele Naiyaravoro. And, of course, if the ‘Tahs possible 10-12-15 combo of Foley, Beale and Folau get it right, it could be a tougher-than-expected afternoon.
Besides, as they say – beware the wounded animal.
Aside from the Sunwolves and the Rebels, no other team emerged with from the 2017 season with more bruises than the Waratahs.
They have nothing to lose, they can certainly be seen as the underdogs going into this match, and that can make them dangerous.
Beale is desperate to taste some success this season, and if that kind of enthusiasm comes from such a key figure in the squad, I don’t see how it cannot spread throughout the team.
So again, Stormers, beware. HE WAS often dismissed as the jester of the rugby world but former Springbok coach Peter de Villiers believes that Saru is living in a fool’s paradise and that Bok rugby has gone backwards.
De Villiers was frank in his assessment of the woes of South African rugby, especially the Boks, since he walked away from the job in the aftermath of the team’s quarter-final exit at the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
De Villiers, who was recently appointed coach of Zimbabwe, was the last Bok coach to win the then Tri-Nations and beat the All Blacks in New Zealand, while also guiding the team to a series win against the British and Irish Lions.
It was under De Villiers that the Boks last became the number one team in the world and he feels that the side has been on a downward spiral under former coaches Heyneke Meyer and Allister Coetzee.
“It doesn’t make me feel good because I know that my country went backwards in eight years. It is not that they have gone backwards but if you stagnate in any way in life, you will go backwards because everybody is going past you. And that is a worrying factor, it doesn’t make you feel good and I don’t like to read about it,” De Villiers said yesterday.
De Villiers was scathing in citing some of the problems that have long held back the progress of the game in SA, and chief among those is Saru’s reluctance to make the game accessible to all in the country.
“I don’t know what the reasons are for that (stagnation),” De Villiers said.
“They didn’t grow. If you look at rugby schools in SA that is giving us the problem because rugby players are being bought from third teams. What about your late developers? If you want to select your game at international level, you have to have mass participation down there so that your best can come out. There is a lot they put in place that has made the team stagnant. We are fooling ourselves too much. We don’t have the standard and we don’t have a world standard.
“We don’t know what we need in every position and we don’t have the guys. We don’t know who is number one, two, three and four and the reason why they are number one, two, three and four. I don’t want to get into their household things because they don’t want to hear it from me. If they wanted to, they would have consulted me.”
At the same time De Villiers doesn’t think that the much touted ascension of Saru director of rugby Rassie Erasmus to Bok coach will be a solution to the national team’s waning strength in world rugby.
“I don’t know. The solution is to go back to one thing that Riaan Oberholzer and Louis Luyt put in place. A percentage of all the sponsorship money must go to development. There are boys who are missing out on Springbok colours because they are not at a rugby school. I’m not talking black and white here, I’m talking about development. All of us need development,” he said.
De Villiers also took a swipe at his successors in Meyer and Coetzee for not having spoken to him about his experiences as Bok coach.
De Villiers went on to question why Meyer would have preferred speaking to Erasmus who had only spent time with the Boks during the 2011 World Cup instead of the man who had been coaching the team for four years at the time.
“It is my biggest disappointment that Allister (Coetzee) and Heyneke (Meyer) never made the time to talk to me and share my experiences of how bad I was treated. Rassie came with us to the World Cup in 2011 for only four weeks and Heyneke chose to speak to Rassie about four years experience and that made me think wow you are the luckiest person in South Africa because the system expected of me to be three times better than anyone to get the job,” De Villiers, said.
While De Villiers has the unenviable task of breathing life back into Zimbabwe rugby and guiding them to qualification for next year’s Rugby World Cup in Japan, De Villiers says Saru need to get their house in order before extending an olive branch to African nations that they have neglected over the years.
“My principle in life is to get your own house in order first. For them to go to any other African country now, who will believe them? Who will follow their structures,” said De Villiers.