Heyneke Meyer: Dream turns into nightmare

Alfred Hitchcock gave viewers nightmares for years after his movie classic Psycho in which Anthony Perkins kills Janet Leigh in a bloody shower scene.

A deranged Norman Bates, played by Perkins, knifes Marion Crane (Leigh) in probably the most famous scene of the director’s career.

I was reminded of this by coach Eddie Jones’s comment after Japan’s samurai warriors put the sword to the Springboks in Brighton.

The 34-32 loss diminished, if not killed, South Africa’s hopes of winning the Webb Ellis Trophy. What had been a dream turned into a nightmare.

“It got to 60 minutes, and we were right in it but I thought it was going to be like the woman going into the shower in a horror film, you just knew what was going to happen next,” Jones said, who coached the Wallabies in the 2003 World Cup and was on the Springbok staff when we won the World Cup in 2007.

He expected the Springboks to take control as they usual do and go on to beat Japan by about 30 points. They could have made Bates look like an amateur when finishing off a victim.

And why not? Springboks coach Heyneke Meyer, who insists that big is better, could rely on a team of giants playing against far smaller opponents.

Yet Francois Pienaar, captain of South Africa’s 1995 World Cup-winning team, was on hand as a commentator to see the Springboks plunge into the depths of despair and defeat.

He said it appeared the Springboks were trying to “beat up” Japan and this wouldn’t work. They should rather keep calm and focus on their gameplan, including the set piece and the driving maul. He also stressed that the team should be picked on form not experience.

In the end, the bully-boy tactics didn’t work against the faster and smarter Japan and I am sure the last winning try by the Cherry Blossoms will give Meyer nightmares for years.

While Meyer again fiddles with his rugby Rubik’s Cube, he should honestly ponder why we lost a game that the Springboks could have won.

He will have noted that South Africa gave away far too many penalties, especially the one when an idiotic Coenie Oosthuizen earned a yellow card for a professional foul in the closing minutes of the game.

The move reduced the Springboks’ pack to seven men and they could ill afford that with Japan near the South African tryline. Meyer then made more changes and brought back props Jannie du Plessis and ‘Beast’ Tendai Mtawarira in the hope that the Springboks would win the scrum.

The ploy didn’t work and Japan captain Michael Leitch eventually turned down a plea from Jones to take the points with an easy kick at the posts and earn a draw. He had winning on his mind and it paid off when Karne Hesketh scored a try that shook World Cup history.

Pienaar, speaking during the game, warned against making too many changes. The fewer the better, he said. Meyer had other ideas and made eight substitutions during the match. At one time, he replaced the entire Springbok front row and then reshuffled it again near the end.

Almost every South African fan and a dog could see why we lost. Even a hound, which sits near me at the club where I watched the match, slunk away in disgust afterwards with his tail between his legs.

The Springboks coach, however, doesn’t admit his mistakes. He either blames the players or resorts to yet another apology to the nation, saying that he takes full responsibility. Of course he should. He’s the guy with the gameplan that the players have to follow. In Meyer land, it’s my way or the highway.

Penalties cost us dear. The Springboks gave away 10 in the first 48 minutes of the game, and when we could have taken points with kicks at the posts, Meyer opted for a rolling maul.

Japan fullback Ayumu Goromaru made the Springboks pay for their indiscipline. He kicked five penalties, two conversions and scored a try for a personal tally of 24 points. This turned out to be just as important as the last-gasp try.

South African fans and the media predictably and furiously turned on Meyer and his team. Some critics are now demanding that Meyer drops captain Jean de Villiers and vice-captain Victor Matfield from the starting line-up for the Samoa match.

Neither of them have been a force lately. De Villiers had a poor game against Japan and the 38-year-old Matfield looked nowhere near the player he once was. One critic went as far as saying that De Villiers was doing himself a disservice by hanging on his place and captaincy in the team.

Mark Keohane, a Business Day Sport Monthly columnist who I worked with on the Cape Argus in the good old days, said:

“De Villiers, a legend of the game, has done himself a disservice because of an obsession to captain the team at the World Cup.

“His conditioning, because of the knee ligament injury against Wales last year and the broken jaw against Argentina two months ago, is not of the necessary standard. He, as a player, is Jean de Villiers in name only.”

He did not spare Matfield either.

“Those old daddies, notably Jean de Villiers and Victor Matfield, look like pensioners,” Keohane wrote.

In my view, Damian de Allende is a far better bet at centre than the 34-year-old de Villiers. He and Jesse Kriel have played well as a centre pairing and should be the first choice. And Matfield should make way for a lock pairing of Eben Etzebeth and Lood de Jager. Watch Matfield trundling about the pitch and then see de Jager run with the ball in-hand and score. See the difference?

Meyer could have learnt a thing from jazz pianist George Shearing. The Briton, who was born blind, became one of world’s most popular pianists and once thrilled Japanese fans at a concert in Tokyo with his rendering of a song he called Cherry Blossom Nova.

I doubt that the Springboks coach would know or care about Shearing but he could take note of his skills, one of which was improvising, when wondering what went wrong in Brighton.

When your performance needs a lift, it’s time to improvise. However, Meyer doesn’t know how to change his tune. He will stubbornly stick to his gameplan no matter what and appears to be blind to the Springboks’ failings.

Samoa will have looked at the way we play. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that and devise counters. Jones worked us out, and Japan played quick-tempo and smarter rugby. Their second try looked like it came out of an Aussie or All Blacks playbook, the Aussies call the move a ‘Brumbie’, named after the top Australian team.

It’s now time for Meyer to shed his arrogant attitude and yank his head out of the sand. If not he may have to quit after the World Cup, take the highway and join the flock on a South African ostrich farm.

We have the players to beat Samoa in this now critical game. It will all depend on Meyer. Even if we win this pool match and eventually advance to the quarter-finals, I doubt we will survive against the likes of the top-tier teams.

Meyer just doesn’t get it. He never has. So I expect the same tactics and a team loaded with experience. Hand on heart, I hope the Springboks succeed, but my head tells me otherwise.