Rugby World Cup 2011: Pieter de Villiers must drop the dead wood in his South Africa team

Sink or swim: Pieter de Villiers has a big decision to make (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)

If Pieter de Villiers and South Africa are to achieve anything at this Rugby World Cup he must realise what his best team is – and fast.

The substitution of John Smit, Pierre Spies and Bryan Habana, with the Springboks on their knees against Wales, brought about an instant change in fortunes for the struggling world champions.

Bismarck du Plessis lead the way in defence and carried well when called upon, Willem Alberts brought ballast and application to the back row and Francois Hougaard made more yardage with the ball than Habana had managed for the preceding 60 minutes.

If De Villiers can extend his mea culpa even further by picking young Sharks fly-half Pat Lambie at 10 then South Africa may have something resembling a competitive team.

If the marked improvement in South Africa's performance after those substitutions was not evidence enough for De Villiers then he should look to England's campaign in 2007.

They were also world champions and they also began the tournament in a mess. By the end of the 2nd pool game they had sneaked past the USA and been thrashed by the Boks.

Player power and cold hard reality sunk in and they adapated. Tactics were changed (actually tactics were employed for the first time having been missing in action before). Also, and most importantly, players like Shaun Perry who were quite clearly not up to the task of defending the trophy were removed.

Reinventing the wheel mid-tournament requires guts, but England showed it can be done, going on to reach the final when it looked impossible.

There is however a spanner in the works for South Africa: the fitness of Bakkies Botha, Victor Matfield and Jean de Villiers. If they are all unavailable (and it doesn't look good for Botha) then the Boks lose three towers of experience. If you also drop John Smit you are down four big, big leaders.

Does De Villiers have the courage to do what needs to be done? Will the players need to tell him so? Or will he carry on blindly with Plan A?

For what it's worth this is the team that I would pick for the big game against Samoa:

South Africa: Beast, Du Plessis, Du Plessis, Rossouw, Matfield (captain if fit), Brussow, Alberts, Burger, Du Preez, Lambie, Hougaard, De Villiers (if fit), Fourie, Pietersen, F Steyn

Thoughts?