Snor feels sorry for Heyneke – and himself

Peter De Villiers, speaking on Talk Radio 702, expressed sympathy for Heyneke Meyer in his role as Springbok coach.

“I feel sorry for Heyneke, because he is starting on the back foot. The franchises are already set for the new season and know the news that a new team will come into Super Rugby. The franchises will now play their players down the drain to survive, to make sure they aren’t in that bottom spot.

“It will be a very tough year, and Heyneke was only appointed now. He couldn’t sit down and talk to the franchises before they did their planning in place. He couldn’t sit down and reveal his plans and discuss with them.

He also expressed his bitterness at the way his contract had ended.

“Nobody spoke to me about it since I came back from the World Cup. Nobody spoke to me. Perhaps I shouldn’t speak about it, because if I speak about it, people think I am lobbying for a job. I am not criticising, this is a big organisation and there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes, but it doesn’t take much to be professional and sit down and say “listen here, we don’t think that we are going to renew your contract”. Then give you the reasons for it. Then you can move on.

“There was no exit strategy for me. There wasn’t one for John or Victor. This is what caused me some bitterness in the fact that there was nothing. We didn’t talk about anything. I was surprised to hear that Jurie Roux said on radio that they were busy with the process to appoint the Bok coach since June last year.

“So since June last year they never had the opportunity to talk to me, although we were together for four weeks in New Zealand and stayed in the same hotel. We travelled together and they never had the chance to talk to me. Is that how you treat someone? I don’t know, I can have my own opinion about it, but I can’t air it because I don’t want people to be negative. We need them to support the Springboks, that’s all.

“I would love to give back what I received. It was a wonderful experience, but again, if you started the process in June then everybody would have been settled and moving on. There is a lot of uneasiness and friction in my house at the moment. Nobody knows where we are going, or what is going to happen.”