Peter de Villiers: Saru tried to blacklist me!

Former Springbok coach Peter de Villiers claimed on Monday that not only did South African rugby not want him back, they had gone so far as to blacklist him, offer a union money not to employ him and even phoned his new employers, the Zimbabwe Rugby Union, in an effort to dissuade them from making him their new national coach.

“I am so glad to be the new Zimbabwe coach, it gave me comfort because I am not welcome in my own country, so I am leaving. The first thing I will do when I get to Zimbabwe is sing the national anthem, because they want me there. The Springboks don’t want me.

“I got a call from the Zimbabwe Rugby Union to say there is a problem, SA Rugby say I am blacklisted and they cannot appoint me. When Boland wanted to make me coach, someone from SA Rugby offered them R2 million not to appoint me, and a union like that cannot afford to say no to that sort of money,” De Villiers said on Monday at a press conference in Johannesburg to announce his appointment on a two-year contract as the new coach of the Zimbabwe Sables.

“SA Rugby does not want to hear from me, they will say I am bitter, but they are deluding themselves. If you say to someone ‘What do you know?’, then you don’t want to learn from anyone else. As Springbok coach, I knew what I had and how to utilise the players. My biggest disappointment was that Allister Coetzee and Heyneke Meyer never made the time to talk to me so I could share my experiences of how badly I was treated with them. Rassie Erasmus came to the World Cup for four weeks in 2011 and Heyneke chose to speak to him about the four years I was in charge.”

A SA Rugby spokesman told The Citizen on Monday that “his allegations are completely untrue and we congratulate him on his appointment.”

The first item on De Villiers’ new agenda will be to qualify Zimbabwe for the 2019 World Cup, with the Sables currently sitting fifth out of six teams in the standings. The top team qualifies automatically, while the second-placed side goes into the repechage.

The man with a 62% winning record with the Springboks, but five wins over the All Blacks, the 2009 Tri-Nations title and a series win over the British and Irish Lions, has his first match in charge at home against Morocco on June 16.

“I know it’s going to be extremely difficult, the job is bigger than the Springbok job because 95% of the people in South Africa expected me to fail. In Zimbabwe, the pressure to be successful is so much more and I don’t want to damage their hopes. But I laugh in the face of danger.

“It’s a bit easier that I don’t know the players so I won’t be biased. But I will set my standards – the norms at international level – to compete at that level. The likes of David Pocock, Tendai Mtawarira, Brian Mujati, Tonderai Chavhanga and Takudzwa Ngwenya all come from Zimbabwe so there should be no more questions about whether they have the players,” De Villiers said.

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