Peter de Villiers has alleged that SA Rugby attempted to block his appointment as the new coach of Zimbabwe.

De Villiers made a number of allegations at a press conference in Johannesburg on Monday, which included a claim that SA Rugby had sought to blacklist him and prevent him from finding other employment.

De Villiers was head coach of the Boks from 2008 to 2011, before exiting his post after the team bowed out at the quarter-finals of the World Cup.

‘I am so glad to be the new Zimbabwe coach, it gave me comfort because I am not welcome in my own country, so I am leaving. The first thing I will do when I get to Zimbabwe is sing the national anthem, because they want me there. The Springboks don’t want me,’ he said.

‘I got a call from the Zimbabwe Rugby Union to say there is a problem, SA Rugby say I am blacklisted and they cannot appoint me. When Boland wanted to make me coach, someone from SA Rugby offered them R2-million not to appoint me, and a union like that cannot afford to say no to that sort of money.’

He went on to suggest that SA Rugby did not want to hear from him, but that they would be ‘deluding themselves’ to presume he was just bitter.

‘If you say to someone “What do you know?”, then you don’t want to learn from anyone else. As Springbok coach, I knew what I had and how to utilise the players. My biggest disappointment was that Allister Coetzee and Heyneke Meyer never made the time to talk to me so I could share my experiences of how badly I was treated with them.

‘Rassie Erasmus came to the World Cup for four weeks in 2011 and Heyneke chose to speak to him about the four years I was in charge.’

In response to these allegations, an SA Rugby spokesperson stated that they were ‘completely untrue’.

Photo: Christiaan Kotze/Gallo Images