Need to find the balance

So I was about to blog about last nights SA rugby awards until I read an interesting article about Coach Heyneke Meyer who wants to change the system of SA rugby. The system he refers to is the one where the provinces decide when they rest their Springbok players and not SARU. His argument is that players are being overplayed and not getting enough time to rest and subsequently getting injured and thus not available for selection to the national side. Unlike New-Zealand where their national players are contracted to the NZ rugby union and not to their respective provinces, this gives them the ability to rest players without the consent of provincial coaches. I do agree that players are being overplayed with a hectic Super Rugby and Championship season; players do need time to rest. But let’s just say that we had the same system as NZ and we could rest our players at will so that we protect them from injury. How would we determine who the inform players are? You could have a player for example Deon Fourie who was named Absa Currie cup player of the year, in the form of his life but you would not have anybody to compare him to as you are resting all your Boks. So you couldn’t select him as you would have nobody to compare to. This would be unfair to the players who already deserve a place in the team but are being overlooked whether it be because they’re not Bulls or because the coach doesn’t like them, who knows, but my point is you can’t treat Springbok players like porcelain just because they’re Springboks. Let’s not forget how they became Boks in the first place, by performing at provincial level. They need to find a balance between Boks playing and getting enough game time to warrant their selection and being fit and uninjured to be able to play.

The other upside to resting them is you will be able to develop young players to be able to gain experience, but wait that wont matter because only players that have been Springboks before get selected. Robbie Deans had a brilliant plan, play young inexperienced players enough until they become young experienced players, had he not had so many injuries he would have had a young experienced team. We need to have a hard look at how our team is selected.