Will Peter de Villiers last?

When Australia beat New Zealand PdV was, for him strangely, silent. Graham Henry pointed the blame squarely (and you would have to say fairly) at mistakes by his players - particularly a run of dropping the ball and not competing at breakdowns. A week later (when SA's next big match is against NZ) when NZ win by dominating the line out, the scrum, the breakdown and basically don't turn the ball over (well not often) PdV discovers a string of refereeing errors. Graham Henry might be forgiven for missing them, but Robbie Deans didn't take that popular route of blaming the referee, he blamed his own team for poor execution. There may have been mistakes of refereeing in there of course, but outside of PdV I don't think anyone thinks there were consistent or even many such errors.

Then, this weekend just gone, PdV thinks that the referee is to blame for his side being penalised all the time. I don't remember noticing a single occasion where I thought the penalty/free kick was not given for a real offence - that's one thing. From the TV isn't pretty hard to tell if there are odd little offences on the floor unless they get a lucky camera angle. There were probably some of those that got missed, but unless PdV is omnipresent how did he see them?

In fact Paddy O'Brien, the boss of the IRB's referees is going to tear a strip off PdV and Matfield for their abusive comments about the referee. If you read his press release about it he seems, quite strongly, to suggest that the referees mistake was "not escalating the penalties appropriately" - which if you read my match report and read between the lines about the number of long-arm penalties against the Boks suggests O'Brien thinks some of the Boks should have been sent to the sin bin (in fact there were about 5 "last warnings" all to the Boks... so he might very well have a case, although you can bet it's a case PdV won't like).

Now, I'm not saying that referees are perfect - read back in this blog if you think I might even think that. There are, undoubtedly, situations when refereeing mistakes cost the team that deserves to win (AB v France in the RWC quarterfinal anyone?) but, however painful it is and however long the memory lingers it's not that common.

If, as a coach, you continuously blame the referee can I ask how you expect to motivate and develop your team? If it's all the referee's fault why should they try to improve? How do you get them to improve? How do you get them to invest in your game plan when the referee obviously doesn't want them to play that way? (Game plans that involve throwing a hand-grenade into the opponents changing rooms are frowned on after all!)

With the possible exception of Dan Carter against the Lions in the second test in 2005, no one has a perfect game. (John Eales might count in there too, given the reason for his nickname of "Nobody.") Surely part of being a coach, at any level, is to identify weaknesses in your players and in your team (in the interactions between players and the game plan) and work on ways to reduce or neutralise those weaknesses whilst looking for ways you can exploit weakness you see in the opposition. Think back to the first paragraph: in one match the ABs fail to produce at line-out, breakdown and cough up lots of simple mistakes. In the following match, against the same opposition, they beat them hands down in all those phases and in the match. They also change the game plan quite a bit. You would guess that, apart from the change in personnel, the coaches spent rather a lot of time working on the skills that had let the ABs down the previous week - and if you believe in judging with the evidence of your own eyes, you'd assume that's exactly what happened, along with the change of game plan.

If PdV continuously blames the referee, how long will it take for the Boks to slide right down the world ratings? They're down to 2nd and if Australia win this weekend, they'll be down to 3rd. Shades of England after 2003 anyone? SCW might have walked (possibly before he was pushed), Robinson couldn't reverse the decline, Ashton wasn't really given a decent run, nor the power to choose his own backroom staff. Getting the final papered over a lot of cracks in England's structure - cracks that the Six Nations earlier this year bought into harsh relief (much to Wales' glory). Will SA go the same way?