So, this is it then. For four years we have heard from Springbok mentor Heyneke Meyer that we should not judge him on anything other than his team’s World Cup campaign.

For four years we have been subjected to the never-ending rantings that experience wins you World Cups and that the Springboks have become more than just the traditional old juggernaut, able of bludgeoning any opponent into rugby oblivion.

Talk is cheap and now the time for talk has come to an end. Now we look for results. Now we look for consistency. Now we look for quality in performance. We have reached the end of the four-year cycle. Heyneke Meyer’s four years have come to an end. He and the Springboks now face Rugby Ragnarok.

I confess that I am a supporter of Heyneke Meyer. I have been a supporter of his from the very first Bok game under his tutelage.

And my reason is fairly simple; Meyer had the coaching credentials to his name to merit his selection as the national coach. It was he who pioneered the Bulls to rugby greatness in the mid 2000s. He was the one who brought something back to South African rugby that no other coach did before him in the professional era.

Most of all, he was a man of a high moral standard. He sees rugby as it was meant to be seen. It is a sport and it is a passion, and its foundations has always been about true sportsmanship, the expression of human spirituality and respect.

He transformed the Boks into a respectable team. He reignited the old flame of historical rivalry with the New Zealand All Blacks by building a genuine rugby relationship with their coach, the impressive Steve Hansen.

Meyer is a very likable guy. He gives credit where it is due, he never belittles his opponents, shows them respect and honors the challenge laid down before him and his men. He selected a captain for the Springboks that complemented his views on what Springbok rugby should really be.

Together with Jean de Villiers, Meyer has created a pure team culture among the players and pleasant relations with his adversaries. And, for three years, his team did very well and were the second best team in the world.

And then everything fell apart.

I stand by what I said previously, I like Meyer as a human being and a rugby coach. I trusted and supported him in all his decisions, even if it took a long while for me to accept his sometimes ludicrous decisions, chiefly those to recall as many 2007 veterans and the decision to entrust all of them with the hopes of a nation regardless of the progress made by the young ones in our rugby.

Under Meyer, the Boks sat with a very impressive 75% winning percentage and the number two spot in the world rankings for a good three years.

His team broke the hoodoo of Suncorp in 2013, they defeated France in France for the first time in years. His team still holds a lead on the head-to-head encounters against the Wallabies since 2011, more impressively, his team managed to defeat the Wallabies by 20 points in three games in succession.

He had little success against the All Blacks, but each and every game lived up to the hype ever since he took over.

But something changed in 2014, and strangely enough, I put the blame on the All Blacks for this. Yes, it is a very odd statement, but when we think about it, it does make sense.

I have made the point in the past that a win against the All Blacks often does the Springboks more harm than good. For example, after defeating the New Zealanders three times in a row in 2009, the Boks went on to perform pathetically in the northern hemisphere tour. The same happened in 2014. After beating the old foes, the Springboks managed to lose against both Ireland and Wales. Things would only get worse after this. First time losses to Japan and Argentina have been the lowest points in Springbok rugby history. We will get back to this point in a minute.

First, I want to resign myself to my own perceptions of an ideal rugby universe. In a previous article I wrote that I personally love World Cups because it is the only place where the underdogs get to upstage the so called powerhouses of World Rugby. I claimed that I believe the World Cup is the only tournament that hasn’t been completely dominated by one particular team. Lastly, I said that I hope that the minnows get something more out of the 2015 World Cup than they had bargained for.

But why, oh why did it have to be against the Springboks?!

I found myself in a state of purgatorial confliction. On the one hand, I was devastated by the first-time losses to Argentina and Japan, but on the other hand I couldn’t help but to feel a real sense of joy for both those teams. It is easy to envy them that moment of greatness, I found. What I also found is that it takes true sportsmanship to be happy for those kinds of victories for the minnows of our beloved sport.

Congratulations Wales for defeating the Boks for only the second time in history in 2014. Congratulations to Argentina for beating the Boks for the first time in history, in South Africa of all places. And congratulations to Japan for writing their own little piece of history in the Rugby archives.

Now, Heyneke Meyer and his Springboks are under the spotlight for the wrong reasons. No longer is South African rugby being taken seriously. No longer are the Springboks considered to be favourites in this year’s World Cup. No longer do the Springboks represent that age old relentlessness and national passion that they have been known for.

And for good reason.

My liking of Meyer does not blind me to the truth. It is easy to say that sometimes things go wrong for even the best of people, in sports especially. It is easy to say that sometimes we just have to accept that we just weren’t good enough and that the opponents wanted victory so much more. What isn’t easy is to say that something is very wrong within our beloved team’s camp.

Something is very wrong with the Boks and I have suspected it for some time now. I do not believe that our problem lies with our talent or our playing ability. South Africa is one of the greatest rugby nations in the world in terms of quality in depth and natural rugby playing ability.

This is still the case regardless of what has transpired over the last year. I don’t even thing that it is our game plan and style of play that is to blame for our mediocrity. Sure there will always be concerns and outcries for the coming of change, but I simply do not believe that it is the root of our problems. A contributing factor? Oh yes.

I firmly believe that our problems have stemmed from psychological strain. I will explain this as best I can. I see a lot of negativity and hesitation in everyone involved with the Springboks, be it the players or management.

When the Boks run onto the field these days, their posture is noticeably slack. The body language smacks you in the face with an easy message: Something is not well.

Keep a weather eye on it. There is no energy when they run onto the field, it looks as if they really don’t want to be there. The shoulders are slumped, the arms wiggle and the heads are down. They do not run onto the pitch, they walk. They sing our beloved and exceedingly beautiful anthem without any semblance of passion. I might be wrong about all of this, but I really do feel like I am not.

And it seems as if this vibe of negativity has even infected us, the supporters. Our stadiums are not what they used to be and now I’m not just talking about attendances. Usually when a South African side takes to the field, you immediately know about it. The crowd chants “Bokke” and sing Shosholoza like there is no tomorrow. It’s just gone now.

The players seem frustrated. We all know that Bismarck du Plessis has never and will never be the poster boy for discipline, but his actions and form of the last two years suggest that there is something else very, very wrong within our entire setup.

Bismarck looks frustrated and no one knows why. Francois Steyn is another example of this kind of behaviour and so is Jannie du Plessis, Victor Matfield, Schalk Burger and to a lesser extent, Jean de Villiers. Heyneke himself is another example.

As I said before, these statements are all theoretical. But this is fact; Heyneke Meyer needs to go after this World Cup. I say this not because of the loss of recent form or the tidal waves of surreal humiliation that we as South African supporters have been subjected to the past year.

I will continue to like Meyer as the human being, the rugby fan and as the coach, because we need to give credit where it’s due, he has done a fairly good job.

Meyer needs to go because he has not and will not bring change to our rugby and change is what South African rugby desperately needs. Meyer has squeezed every drop out of the old South African way, the way that he himself invented.

His theology of our rugby, his vision of our rugby, his recreation of our rugby is outdated. This is nothing for him to be ashamed of. Time marches on and waits for no one. He revolutionised our rugby when our rugby needed it and we profited from that.

When I think of Heyneke Meyer as the coach of the Springboks, I think of one sentence: “He was the right coach at the wrong time.”

I feel sorry for him because I believe that if he was the one who coached the Boks in 2008 to 2011, he might have been the best Springbok coach in our entire history. His way, the Meyer Way, was still effective back then, 2009 is proof enough. That was the perfect timeline for Heyneke and his Meyer Way. He would have had all of his favourite players in their prime. Imagine what he could have done then? It might not be crazy to believe that the Boks might even have been World Champions in 2011 if he was the coach. Of course, this is all just theoretical.

He was appointed in 2012 and that was not the right year or the right tenure for him and on that account I feel infinitely sorry for him. But he also has to face the truth. He should have known way back then that the game would truly completely have changed by that time. He should have known that his old guard would not be in their prime anymore.

He should have known that he needed to bring change to a dying era of South African rugby.

Then he committed the ultimate sin. He chose to ignore all these facts and pretend that he was coaching in 2008. He chose to ignore the potential of all of the country’s new players. Instead he chose to cling onto the injustice of being the right coach at the wrong time.

This weekend the Springboks will face off against the red hot dragons and this particular Springbok supporter is a nervous wreck. I know deep down, and this is certainly not an insult to Wales, that if the Boks play at full tilt, and I mean really at full tilt, we will win this weekend. The problem is that we’ve seen the Boks play at 100% so long ago that we have forgotten how good they can be.

The Bok team that will take to the field this weekend is pretty much perfect. It is our strongest available side and that only adds to the nerves. Should this Bok team lose, the Bok team that we have been begging for for oh so long, we will truly be in the gutters.

There are no excuses now. Victor Matfield is not playing. Neither are Jean de Villiers, Bakkies Botha, Guthro Steenkamp, Jannie du Plessis, Juan Smith, Zane Kirchner or Jaque Fourie. If they lose, who can you blame? Only the players you would have selected yourself.

My esteemed fellow countyman, Biltongbek, will disagree with me on this, but I believe it to be true. Fourie du Preez is currently the best scrum-half in South Africa. Unless he has a complete shocker, no one can disagree with his retention in the starting berth.

Schalk Burger has been the best loose forward in the competition for the Springboks. There are no more fossils to blame if we lose this game. The only people we can blame will be the fifteen players on the field. And Heyneke Meyer. Never forget Heyneke Meyer.

Coming back to my earlier point, there is something that concerns me very much about our rugby. We are arrogant and spoiled.

When we defeat the unstoppable All Blacks, our heads tend to get bigger than the rest of our bodies. Duane Vermeulen admitted as much last year against Ireland where he said that the Bok camp felt that they were in cruise mode after dealing with the Kiwis in Johannesburg.

So my question is this. How the hell is it possible for our team to become so blindingly arrogant whenever they achieve something truly special? Is Meyer in on it? He must be because how else can the players retain that frame of mind? Is it not Meyer’s obligation to ensure that the team remains in the right head space? This is something that litters Springbok history. Whenever we beat the All Blacks, we crash back down to earth in magnificent fashion.

And so my closing argument is this. We are the Springboks. We play the game the way our tradition demands of us. And what is that, pray tell?

The Springbok way is to play with unrelenting passion, to play with aggression, to play with physicality, to play for the fans, to play for the coach, to play for each other, to play for ourselves. To express, to challenge, to endure. Game plan and tactics is just detail.

Tomorrow we can go all out attacking rugby, but it will always be just a technicality. Even if we play expansively, we will still play with the aforementioned cornerstones. We are losing because we have forgotten what Springbok rugby is. Bring back the passion, bring back the aggression, bring back the physicality. Once we’ve done that we can worry about the details.

Stop trying to bend to the critique of the rugby world because that critique will always change no matter what we do.

Mauling was only ever “boring” when the Springboks did it, Other countries tried their best to ban that facet of the game and when they saw that their outcries would not succeed, they began doing it themselves. The New Zealanders and Australians who hated the rolling maul with every fiber of their being now rejoice when their teams score off it.

When Francois Steyn kicked 65-metre penalties, the world called him out for it, saying that it dilutes the game and encourages less opportunities for tries. Now that those same countries have discovered their own long range kickers, it’s the greatest thing in the world

When the Springboks kicked up and under after up and under they were called out for it, being accused of being “boring”. Now Ireland practically lives on the up and under and suddenly doing it is okay. The All Blacks have started doing it more as well and no one bats an eye.

When the Boks came up with the tactic of latching a player onto the ball carrier for added strength and security of the ball, it was met with a wide variety of criticism. Years later it is used by every rugby playing nation in the world.

I am not saying these things meaning it as a slight to all the other countries in the world. I am saying it because the Boks are listening too much about how we should play and we shouldn’t in order to win favour with certain other teams’ supporters. That is not how it should work. Do what you do well.

This is also not a suggestion to fall back on past habits, it is simply a request to keep our heads in the right place. Unfortunately Bok rugby will never win any popularity contests, there will always be those who take issue with us. We are not the most liked team in the world. That’s fair enough, we shouldn’t care.

The change that I am asking for is the realisation that we must address all areas of the game, not just those that we traditionally specialise in. Bring more into the game, but don’t become obsessed with being like other teams. We are unique in our own way.

To Heyneke Meyer and the Springboks, all I can say is that we support you, win or lose. This weekend will not be easy, but we can do it. Good luck with the game and good luck to the Welsh, may the best team win.

And finally I would like to thank Paddy ‘Effen’ Effeney and the rest of The Roar team for making The Roar such a special place to voice our sporting opinions. This will be my last article of the year and perhaps for a long time or ever, depending on how much time my new commitments afford me.

I have enjoyed writing, reading and sharing my opinions with a great group of people.

Before this article I have reached 100,000 article views in 50-odd articles, a proud self-pat-on-the-back moment (we tend to take any congratulations we get, even ones from ourselves!), I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to read this 21-year-old’s mad ramblings and I hope you have enjoyed it.

A special thanks to Diggercane, who always took the time to comment and give me some Kiwi advice on the All Blacks. The Canes will get there eventually mate, just not before the Stormers!

Then another Kiwi friend who’s always provided some lovely banter, Kia Kaha, thanks for the discussions and keep the articles coming, they’re always good to read.

RobC, the ever-present Aussie, I don’t think that there has ever been a time that we have disagreed? If so, that must be some kind of record here on The Roar! Then to my favourite writer here, Brett ‘The Master’ McKay, you talk a lot of sense, even for a scrummy!

Lastly, and especially, to Biltongbek and Harry Jones. Your South African presence here keeps balance in The Force. Your humour is matched only by your rugby knowledge. Thanks for the support guys, without you I just would have been a lost lamb among Springbok-flesh-eating carnivore Kiwis and Wallabies!

Here’s hoping I see you guys again next year, hopefully a bit sooner than that, perhaps a while later. Enjoy the business end of the World Cup, keep the quality of banter, and last of all good luck to all your respective teams.

It is all in vain, of course, because the Boks will be hogging all the glory by the end of the tournament. But then, what do I know? I’m just a kid.