Former Springbok World Cup coach Nick Mallett shared some of his experiences from the 1999 Bok campaign.

He talked about the pressure on the team as defending champions.

“As the World Cup holders there was added pressure on us to put in a good display – as if being the Springbok coach isn’t a hard enough job without having to worry about defending World Cups!” Mallett told Rugby365.

“As far as I was concerned, the ’99 World Cup was just like the Tri-Nations as you needed to beat three big teams – England, Australia and then one of New Zealand or France in the final – to win the trophy.

“Unfortunately, we just didn’t make it into final thanks to that Larkham drop-goal.”

He gave his analysis of what went wrong for the Boks.

“People point to Brendan Venter’s sending off against Uruguay as a major stumbling block during the ’99 World Cup, but the hamstring injury to Henry Honiball before the our opening match against Scotland had an even bigger affect on our planning.

“Our gameplan was based around Henry playing his typically flat game with creative loose forwards running off him and bringing out the best from his backline.

“But with Jannie de Beer replacing him we had to change our approach dramatically, even though he was very successful in his own way.”

Unfortunately the Boks weren’t able to sustain their good form of 1998 through to the latter stages of the World Cup tournament.

“Timing is crucial. After a hectic 1998 season, it would have made perfect sense to rest guys like Gary Teichmann and Henry from the Super 12 and the Currie Cup in ’99, but there were no such things as central contracts, like the All Blacks have, so that was never going to happen.

“We had a good run though in 1997 and ’98, it was just unfortunate that we couldn’t take it through to the World Cup,” said Mallett.

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One thought on “Mallett on RWC 1999

  1. His biggest mistake was dropping teichman and bringing in an injured bobby – i don’t think anyone will ever forgive him for that. we could’ve defended the title but for mallett’s inexplicable brain implosion.

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