Former Springboks coach Peter de Villiers believes that he and Sharks coach John Plumtree “messed up” with Ruan Pienaar and reveals his frank conversation with Schalk Burger.
Pienaar was part of Jake White’s 2007 World Cup-winning Springboks squad and would go on to represent South Africa under his successors De Villiers and Heyneke Meyer.
In total, he played 88 Test matches for the Springboks between 2006 and 2015 while becoming a fan favourite at Irish club Ulster and also starring at Montpellier before returning to South Africa in 2019.
Pienaar was the last member of the 2007 World Cup squad to hang up his boots, doing so at the age of 40 last year, and while he enjoyed an illustrious career, De Villiers believes that he could have been even better.
Frank talk with Burger
During the early stages of his career, Pienaar impressed with his versatility, starting Test matches at scrum-half, fly-half and full-back while he also had cameos off the bench on the wing.
However, he would later settle down in the scrum-half role, particularly after Morne Steyn’s heroics in the second Test against the British and Irish Lions after he replaced Pienaar at fly-half to kick the winning penalty.
In a podcast appearance reflecting on his time as Springboks head coach, De Villiers revealed his selection policy before singling out his mistake with Pienaar.
“I didn’t look at talent because talent has a sell-by date,” he explained on the Behind the Ruck podcast with ex-Springboks Rudy Paige and Juan de Jongh.
“I went out and looked for potential because potential is the thing that you can do better.
“So what you can’t measure, you can’t make better. You can’t measure talent but you can measure potential and the guy with the most potential will be the guy that will be there.
“I spoke to Schalk Burger one day and I said: ‘Schalk you’re close to being dropped now’ and he said: ‘But look at my game, I’m better than…’ and he mentioned the names.
“I said to him: ‘That’s true but you are playing almost 30% below your potential so I’m dropping you because you’re not giving me 100%, that guy will still be weaker than you but he’s giving 100% to the team’.”
Natural fly-half
This prompted a question from Paige who asked the former head coach about the player he coached with the most.
“When players are coming into the Springboks, everyone has potential, but the player with the most untapped potential was Ruan Pienaar,” De Villiers stated.
“We messed up Ruan Pienaar in this country, me and the Sharks coach [John Plumtree], because they had a fly-half Thierry Lacroix [meant Frédéric Michalak], they brought him in and made Pienaar a scrum-half.
“And Pienaar was a natural fly-half, he was such a good rugby player that you can play anywhere and he will be better than some of the players that play there.
“But under pressure, he would fold in any other position except at fly-half. And when he played there for us we scored three more tries in a Test match.”
Src: Planetrugby.com - https://www.planetrugby.com/news/ex-springboks-coach-peter-de-villiers-we-messed-up-ruan-pienaar-in-this-country
