2oceansvibe’s bi-weekly sports columnist, Sean Wilson, puts his judgment hands together and asks just how many chances Wynand Olivier deserves to prove himself at the top level of professional rugby, when Francois Steyn’s statistics – and hair – trump Wynand at every turn.

No-one can divide rugby opinion in South Africa quite like Wynand Olivier can. It seems that half the country think he’s a bad player, and it seems the other half just think he’s useless. How are we going to come to a consensus?

Whatever your opinion of him is, he’s starting the test match at inside centre for the Springboks on Saturday. It will be his 22nd start and his 37th cap. It seems that for every one of his caps, the selectors have said “This is your chance to prove that you can step up to test level”. He better make sure that he makes the most of this chance. If he doesn’t, then he’ll leave the selectors no choice but to say the same thing for his 38th cap.

Even though he’s curried favour from Springbok coaches in the past, there’s no way that he can statistically be defined as the team’s lucky charm. A look through South Africa’s win rate while he’s been wearing the green and gold is even more damning than what his detractors say about him.

Of the 36 test matches that Olivier has been a part of, South Africa have won 50% of them. Seems pretty bad by Springbok standards, doesn’t it?  Even worse, out of the 21 test matches that he’s started, South Africa have won only 38% of them.

Unfortunately, that’s just the potatoes. Here comes the gravy: out of the 13 matches that he’s started at inside centre, South Africa have only won 15% of them. That means that since South Africa’s readmission into test rugby in 1992, Wynand Olivier has the worst winning percentage of any Springbok No. 12.

That’s right. In the last 20 years, there have been 25 players that have started matches for South Africa at inside centre and none of them have a worse winning percentage than Olivier. Not even Danie van Schalkwyk’s 7 starts split during Andre Markgraaf’s teething period and Carel du Plessis’s vague ‘vision’ yielded a lower percentage (29%). Not even the 7 starts made by Heinrich Fuls while Ian McIntosh had far too little SARFU support brought a worse return (43%). Even De Wet Barry managed to be on the winning side for 45% of the 32 starts he made, most of which were during the first half of the naughties, and Springbok rugby has never had a more troubled period than that. After all, Barry had to endure Nick Mallett’s decline, Harry Viljoen’s lack of assertiveness and the dark days of Kamp Staaldraad itself. Springbok rugby from 2000 to 2003 will always be defined as the good, the bad and the Straueli.

Just to make matters worse, South Africa’s record when Frans Steyn (the man Olivier is replacing) starts at number 12 is perfect. That’s not a hyperbole. Steyn has started 12 games at inside centre for the Springboks and the team has won all of them.

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