If the last few days have taught us anything about rugby in this country it’s that we are always only one loss away from disaster. Four on the trot then and things really start going tits up, something I wrote about yesterday as rumours circulated that as many as five black Springboks had approached Cosatu over unfair discrimination.

Following the furore, Heyneke Meyer has been forced to comment on the allegations at the announcement of his squad to play Argentina in Buenos Aires this weekend. Over to Sport24 quoting him here:

“A lot of the players came out and supported us. You’re always going to get players that are unhappy if they don’t play,” Meyer said.

“A guy like Steven Kitshoff really wants to play. He deserves the chance and he hasn’t had a chance. A guy Jan Serfontein was our starting centre and nobody writes about that.

“I don’t look at colour, I look at the best players. I’m totally committed to transformation and I have a great relationship with my players.”

Meyer then spoke about how the team have rallied around him following the Cosatu allegations:

“A lot of them came to me and said ‘coach, it’s not true what’s in the papers … we stand by you, we know exactly where we stand.’ I’m there for them,” said Meyer.

“We’re all South Africans and we’re all there as a team to do the best for our country. We have to back each other in this country as players.”

It shouldn’t be long before we hear from Cosatu’s provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich then, we know he isn’t one to miss the chance to tear Meyer down a notch or three.

The controversy has been enough to bring former Bok coach (and owner of rugby’s finest moustache) Peter de Villiers out from hiding. The man who wrote the world’s longest whinge (also known as his autobiography Politically Incorrect) has penned his thoughts on TimesLive and here’s a selection of what he had to say:

I believe the Boks’ problems started in the build-up to the Test, when Heyneke Meyer underestimated the intelligence of black people with a dishonest selection.

According to the coach, two weeks ago Jesse Kriel was not only the best centre in South Africa, but the world.

In my opinion, Meyer made that assertion to justify the continued exclusion of Lionel Mapoe or Juan de Jongh in the midfield.

In the lead-up to the Durban Test, when Meyer had to choose between Kriel and the fit-again Jean de Villiers, he duly dropped a player of colour on the wing to accommodate the former. That decision took the country back to the late eighties, when blacks supported the opposing teams because of apartheid.

What bothers me is that we live in a state of denial…

Peter de Villiers did once lead us to a glorious victory in Dunedin, not something that many Bok coaches have on their CV. He did, however, take over a World Cup winning team from Jake White and lead us to a quarter-final exit in 2011 at the hands of the Ozzies, something that he doesn’t regularly mention when blowing his own trumpet. How’s this for an analogy:

Against Argentina, the Springboks should surely have moved away from contests to mismatches. But more mismatches were created by Argentina on the day and that was an utter disgrace. We have become like a dog chasing a car and, when he catches up to the car, he does not know what to do.

Every dog has its day Peter, something that we saw back in 2008 when he ended the All Blacks winning streak at one of their many fortresses.

So where does this leave the Boks and their embattled coach? In dire need of a win and some good PR, although even a win won’t do much to dissuade the tide of critics turning against Meyer.

The team for this weekend’s clash below.

[sources:sport24&timeslive]