Mordt the favourite for top Bok coach spot

Dashing past his opposition as he did as a player, former Springbok wing Ray Mordt will be a surprise appointment on Monday when national coach Rudolf Straeuli announces his assistant for the coming Tests against Scotland and Argentina, the Tri-Nations series against the Wallabies and All Blacks, and the World Cup campaign in Australia in October and November.

This was confirmed on Sunday night by an impeccable source, and will come as something of a shock to many after the sacking of Straeuli's Australian assistant Tim Lane.

Lane was fired in a surprise announcement late last week, and the names being bandied about have included several candidates with big reputations.

Hot favourites were Rudy Joubert, this season's most successful South African Super 12 coach in charge of the Bulls, Stormers and Western Province coach Gert Smal or the national Sevens coach, Chester Williams.

Former WP and Springbok coach, Carel du Plessis, has also been mentioned.

But it has been learnt on good authority that Mordt is Straeuli's man - and that he's already agreed to come on board.

Mordt's coaching CV shows he started with master tactician and World Cup winning coach, the late Kitch Christie, at the Golden Lions and then the Lions' Super 10 franchise.

Mordt was on the fringes of the coaching set-up in Gauteng until this year when he was appointed Lane's assistant with the Cats.

The Cats had a miserable Super 12, ending last on the log, but Mordt's huge dedication to the game and his players has never been in question.

In his day, apart from being a robust attacking wing with great pace, he was probably without peer as a fitness guru. This is one of the areas in which he will be of special use in the national setup. He was known as a "player who never tired".

Emerging from the then Rhodesian Currie Cup team, he soon became a regular stalwart of the Springbok side.

In 17 tests he scored more than a dozen tries, including two hat tricks in his last two internationals against New Zealand and the United States.

The highlight of his career came in the penultimate test of the 1981 series against the All Blacks at Auckland.

His three tries, together with a fine performance by flyhalf Naas Botha, sparked a magnificent fightback by the Boks in the infamous "flour-bomb test".

With an anti-tour pilot buzzing the ground throughout the match and dropping bags of flour on the field, the Springboks were trailing 19-3 at the interval and looked dead and buried when Mordt stunned the opposition and the Eden Park crowd with his three tries, two of which were converted by Botha.