PETER BRUCE: Yeah, the Boks are great, but …

The most famous thing I’ve ever written was a brief item in an old Business Day column saying that while I could live with high fences and deteriorating roads, “I can’t live in a country without a flyhalf”. People read it as far away as Mongolia.

More than 20 years later and I never thought I’d say this, but I wish Morné Steyn was still in the Springbok squad and in contention as our starting flyhalf for the Rugby World Cup next year. Yes, he’s old and dull, but he still kicks like an angel and we need someone in our national team who can catch, pass, defend and kick penalties and conversions. Getting penalties is the whole point, it sometimes seems, why we play. Why then do we use them so often to kick for touch and a driving maul that no longer seems to work? I suspect it’s because we don’t have the confidence to kick for posts.

Is there not some way to lure Steyn out of his self-imposed retirement from Test rugby? Is it money? Damian Willemse played so well against Australia on Saturday, his first Test outing in the No 10 jersey. I love watching him play. He is so confident, aggressive, strong and — here’s the thing — sensible and calm under immense pressure. A bit like Lukhanyo Am, he seems to always have time to think.

But he can’t kick. Neither, to be honest, can the reigning chief contender for the spot, Handré Pollard. You never know how he’s going to go. Will he be on or off? Who knows? There are times I can’t watch because he’s playing.

I’ve never rated Pollard, though obviously I’m no expert. He seems a flashy product and he can be pretty good on attack when he is two or three metres away from the opposing try line with a gap in front of him, but anything more than 15m out and he’s ordinary.

I was a big Pat Lambie fan. He was a good place-kicker, a class act who tackled anything and everything that came at him. One on one, Lambie was the best Springbok defender of his time. By far. Poor Lambie always had to come on to sub Pollard or Steyn when we were under attack, inside our own 25m line. It was never fair; he was better than they were.

Now, though, the team is in different hands. What one makes of a situation where the “head coach”, Jacques Nienaber, is a physiotherapist who has never been the head coach of anything before the Springboks, I just don’t know. It seems a bit insane. Nienaber, I’m told by the rugby people I know, does what he is told by Rassie Erasmus, the flaky genius who we happily credit with winning us the last World Cup.

Which, I suppose, is fine provided Erasmus is not too tired and emotional and is thinking clearly when he needs to. Even then, you have to wonder what deleterious effects having a fake coach reporting to a real coach must have on the players.

And that’s where having a good flyhalf is vital. The good ones, behind a good pack, can make a measurable difference to the outcome of a game simply by making the right instinctive decisions when they have the ball, coach or no coach. What I don’t need, as a priority, is an “attacking” flyhalf, someone who thinks they can score tries on their own when they get the ball. I want, primarily, someone who can kick penalties and conversions from anywhere and defend their own channel no matter how terrifying the opponent running into it is.

Every time our forwards win us a penalty we ought to automatically be able to score from it. That isn’t Pollard. Neither is it Elton Jantjies, though he is much underrated. Jantjies’s problem is low self-esteem. Pollard’s is too much.

In the middle, for us now, we discover Willemse, easily the most exciting SA rugby player I have come across since Lambie. There’s nothing Willemse can’t do except kick. I would advise Erasmus to stick with him at No 10 and hire Percy Montgomery to teach him how to kick at posts. And until he can kick, Steyn needs to be a constant option.

That would leave Pollard contesting a place at inside centre, available as a third flyhalf for the World Cup and Willie le Roux a running fullback with Aphelele Fassi as an interchangeable double. Fassi needs more games.

This is not meant to be a selection column. I’m just a fan, I think, stating the obvious. We have to be able to take our penalties, no? I have watched rugby all my life and played first team a few times at Umtata High, when wings threw in at lineouts and you had to put the ball in really straight at scrums.

I never got colours but we played tough schools — Dale College, Queens, Selborne, Cambridge. I remember having to get up at 4am on freezing Saturdays for the school bus to Matatiele. Or Ugie, where the place kickers would take off their boots to kick for poles. If they lost they got a hiding from the headmaster.

We are all blessed to play rugby in SA and I loved the intensity, the aggression, that the Springboks brought to the game against Australia on Saturday. I’m so happy we beat them so handsomely. Never has defeat been so richly deserved. Australians know how to make South Africans doubt themselves, cricket or rugby. They’re chirpers; wittier, better educated, sharper.

But they’re not better. Any government with any brains would make it a priority to make sure that every child in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape had a rugby field at school and a coach, and weekly interschools games (so, transport) and lawnmowers and paint to mark the field. Build 100 boarding schools to house pupils and teachers (business will help) in the province. Feed the kids properly and train them from young. Create a playing population of half a million youngsters over the age of 16.

There would be nothing that could stand in our way. Just look at the sheer talent already in our Springboks. The captain, Siya Kolisi, gets better and more destructive with every game. He’s become a rugby giant. Am, people say, might now be the best player in the world. I once sat next to hooker Bongi Mbonambi on a flight from Cape Town to Joburg. He read a book on mental self-improvement the whole way. This huge disciplined guy who thinks he might still be able to do better.

Malcolm Marx is just a machine, Eben Etzebeth a tyrant. The whole scrum, in fact, is just fabulous. Trevor Nyakane has a naughty look about him that absolutely belongs to the game. There are too many. My secret favourites are Kwagga Smith, Cobus Reinach and Ox Nche. There’s something noble about them, even as they toil.

But we need, and I’m on my knees, a kicker we can rely on. Surely that’s where you start? You know your scrum is going to create penalties. Why not then start by selecting the most reliable place-kicker in the country? I can’t bear the suspense.