Tigers torture no issue for Boks
The Springbok coaches have called for perspective on the defeat to Leicester but are wary of the test that awaits them against France in Toulouse.
An inexperienced and ill-equipped South Africa were beaten 22-17 by a second-string Tigers outfit last Friday, exposing poor selections and under-preparation, particularly with regards to scrummaging, a facet of play were they were decimated.
However, head coach Peter de Villiers remained optimistic in his view of the defeat and diabolical performance, saying, ‘There are more positives than negatives in the loss.
‘Now we know where we’re going. We knew it would be tough with only a week’s preparation. It was an eye-opener, but if we didn’t have the game we wouldn’t have known what we do now.’
De Villiers peddled the same rhetoric after a Springbok B side were schooled by the British & Irish Lions in the third Test, making his explanation for the latest embarrassment perplexing. He continued by offering a lack of leadership for the dirt-trackers (captain Chiliboy Ralepelle limped off with a foot injury 20 minutes into the contest) as a mitigating factor for the defeat.
‘One of the problems we have agreed upon is that of leadership. We now know to address that,’ he said.
The first-choice Springbok combination won’t be short of experienced leaders on Friday evening, and will be favourites for victory, having bagged the notable scalps of the Lions and their southern hemisphere rivals Australia and New Zealand.
They will, however, have to make exponential improvements to the standard of scrummaging they have exhibited thus far to negotiate the challenge of Les Tricolores, as well as hope that the replacements for outstanding loose forwards Juan Smith and Pierre Spies offer them similar value in their areas of specialisation.
Assistant coach Gary said France would be as tough as the All Blacks, who the Springboks have beat thrice in Tri-Nations, in terms of physicality.
‘They have a big strong pack and they will be very physical,’ Gold said. ‘They’re the one team in the world with New Zealand who can match our forwards with size.
‘They’re an emotional team, with a lot of passion. They’ll be playing in a small stadium, and if a French side comes out firing they can rip the heart out of anybody.’
November 9th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
#143 WP_: ya, his ‘insights’ and opinion are especially non-sensical, and all too often resorts to sensationalism to get a belated point accross. he did come from a tabloid publication after all.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
#136 sharks_lover: Yes select Frans Steyn too. Said it many times here this weekend. Would have been awesome just to go with our best side that won us the Lions series and TriNations. Two missing now. JdV and Frans Steyn. They both should have got selected too.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
#149 AndrewBK:
I would suggest you read the Gary Gold blog.
It’s quite obvious who the brains of the operation are.
The Springboks are expected to win on Friday.
They are heavy favorites.
Only concerns are of our own making.
Poor scrummaging.
Adi at 12.
Not selecting f.Steyn or J.DeVilliers.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
#149
Is that all you can do, compare JW to PdV? You cant compare, same players – further along the line. Poor comparison.
#148
Yeah I agree with that. He loves championing Transformation, which is in fact racism. Transformation should be from the bottom up, not the top down. More and more black players are coming through the ranks from schoolboy levels and so on. People must just be patient
November 9th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
These guys didn’t deserve to be on the field, period.
Take it like men and admit your selections were useless guys.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Me myself I am very worried for 3 things vs France.
Number 1 : The France wings and fullback are very very good. I am afraid that our back 3 will be put under pressure of high balls and other skills.
Number 2 : The France Back row is very good . Adi Jacobs is a defence problem sometimes. How will he stop them ?
Number 3 : Our front row. France are very good here even though many people don’t say so. IF we start to lose scrums – what is plan B ??
PLease answer and make me relax again .
November 9th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
#154 ali
Agree, he dishes up a particularly low level of drivel which I cant help but laughing out loud to when I bother to read it. Which is not often, I read other publications which so I bit more insight than that dope
November 9th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
#153 Brigadier Van Zyl: Who would that be? The brains trust at the Boks is pretty shallow on the coaching side, they are certainly not the 3 wise men.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Brigadier firstly your writing style and choice of phrasing suggests to me you are not a new poster but an old hand under a new nick which also, if true suggests you are a liar. Secondly you talk twak, seeing that is the frame of reference you tend to use to freely.
Jake was a diabolical coach. Name me one Springbok coach in the history of this sport that has ever lost by the margin of 49-0. Just one. Add to that a win loss ratio through his 3rd year at the helm of less than 40% success bolstered only by easy wins against weak touring sides otherwise it would have been far worse. A 33% success rate against Nz. A 0% success rate against France in 3 attempts. A 50% success rate against Ireland only due to them sending weak touring sides here. A 45% success rate in the tri nations overall.
Your hero Jake isn’t fit to tie Pdv’s boot laces in real terms of like for like capabilities. Yet your blind prejudice won’t allow you to recognize it.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
#156 rugbygenius: the answer is clear: Earl Rose
November 9th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
#158
John Smit, Victor Matfield and Fourie du Preez?
The 3 wise men?
November 9th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
In your opinions – Is PDv as good as Kitch Christie or better ?
November 9th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
#160 AndrewBK: Yes his defence is better than Jacobs but what of the other two questions sir ?
November 9th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
#159 skopskiet: Still banging on about 49 nil? LOL
What do you make of those very bizzare selections though? I wish Div would get himself 2 better assistant coaches, don’t rate those 2 at all.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
#150 WP_: keo used to impress me at first. (post staaldraad) but since he has gone to bed with Jake he is pushing certain agendas very hard, sometimes despite the facts. the same guy he slated in 2006 suddenly became a great coach after that. might have something to do with his agendas currently.
Rich mostly writes horse **** these days.
I prefer blogger opinions these days cause every journo has an agenda ( ashfak, JJ harmse, keo the whole lot)
The blogger opinions balance out and you get all the views when discussing an issue.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
#161 WP_: Indeed, but not Gary Glitter and Tricky Dickie. Bozos delux. I know why ****’s there and it aint for the rugby although I know he likes to use his tackle on tour.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
#165 moedeloos: The best rugby writers are the fans .
November 9th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
#164 goyougoodthing2: I like the current assistant coaches but if I had to select 2 others it would be Naas and Helgaard Muller.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
#163 rugbygenius: well Earl Rose can cover tackle anything that leaks through the defense, and if our scrum is getting dominated Earl Rose can move to tighthead (during scrumtime) and revert back to fullback during normal play. problem solved.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
#168 rugbygenius: Have you ever met either of them?
Anyway, there are much better rugby brains out there, I could count 10 better coaches than either of those 2.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Yussus skop you are thick!
Fck, how the hell did you graduate out of school.
JW was building a team you chump, PdV INHERITED his side, you cannot compare. JW was creating a World Cup winning team from the ashes of the terrible 2003 RWC. PdV gained a World champion side which he then led to 4 losses out of 6 in the Tri Nations.
2 in a row where at home, in his first year as coach! JW didnt lose one game as coach till year 3!
November 9th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
#169 AndrewBK: Earl has trouble catching a cold, let alone another man with a rugby ball, and wearing boots with studs!
November 9th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
#169 AndrewBK: No I don’t think that is possible. I have never been seeing that sort of play before. In anny case, Rose has not got the physical build for a prop sir. He can play fullback this weekend
November 9th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
#170 goyougoodthing2: What of Rassie ? And Willemse ?
November 9th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
#172 goyougoodthing2: Did he drop a single ball in the Leicster game sir ?
November 9th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
I liked Allistair Coetzee as an assistant coach. He has a sound rugby brain and keeps things simple.
He’s a good coach. Better than ****. Not too sure about Gold either.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
cheers guys, off home.
my parting shot: lets not select stats and facts to suite our argument. acknowledge and give credit to coaches for all their achievements
November 9th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
#162 rugbygenius:
You cannot compare the records of PdV and Christy
Christy had much easier opponents – never coached away games against the AB’s, Wallabies etc.
One thing I know however is that Christy was a better selector than Peter.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Agree Moedeloos
Stats tell you very little about a coach, but the naive and ill-informed will wave them around till there’s on tomorrow trying to prove their one eyed opinions (Read Skopskiet)
November 9th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
#178 Robzim: Thank you for that insight. I can see what you mean.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
As long as PdV keeps winning the tests is all that counts, but some very dodgy selections and rhetoric around merit-only that is complete and utter crud – can only assume its another cunning ploy…
November 9th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
#176 WP_:
I think Gold is an astute reader of the game….not sure about his coaching abilities though…
muir leaves me cold…
November 9th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
#182 gunther: The WP scrum was at it’s K@kkest when Gary was coaching the forwards…never understood his selection as a Bok coach…
November 9th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
#179 WP_: Yeah well…look at Frans Ludeke’s atrocious record with the Lions till he inherited a Heineke Meyer Bulls team
November 9th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Storm outta hell.
Yeah that’s one way of looking at it!
Yeah i’m not sure old Dickie is going do much good at the Lions either.
Gunther
Agree, Gold knows a thing or two about rugby from analyst point of you. He’s good I reckon, agree Coaching not so much, he wasnt special at the Stormers.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Go to News24 dot com quickly to see the woman Toks vd Linde hit on national TV
He pick-up line was something like this: ” And the million dollar question is, what are you doing tonight? ”
She later walked passed and gave Tony Ndoro a kiss on the cheek which really freaked him (Tony) out; Tokka was also freaked out
November 9th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Anyone ready to be seriously honest here, the real f’up under the circumstances on Friday night were not, Maku, Raubenheimer, Johnson, Adams, De Jongh, Nokwe, Rose, Hargreaves, Deysel, Potgieter or Viljoen.
The f’up was Steenkamp, Chili Boy, Du Plessis, Roussouw, Pienaar, Olivier, Ndungane.
Now if we had had a scrum that could have stood up to those guys I say we would have won, we were looking OK till the scrum half bust through the middle sent the center and wing away for their first try and thats when the panic set in and we disintegrated into a bunch of loss kop individuals with Roussouw and Bekker, and Deysel and Johnson trying to win the game on their own.
Poor planning and poor execution, purely out of a lack of cohesion and togetherness, and especially poor scrumming. But don’t start driving this transformation issue as the problem, the problem came from seasoned Springboks as much if not more than from the rookies.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
#183 Storm outta hell:
yep mat proudfoot has turned that pack around…
November 9th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
#165 moedeloos: #187 skopskiet: is this the KEO you guys are yearning for?
Mediocrity triumphs
We are not a mediocre sporting nation that settles for second best. And what the Springboks have offered in the last 24 months has been second best, writes Keo in his Business Day column.
An opportunity was lost in not dismissing Jake White as Springbok coach. One victory, against an England side whose only success in their last nine internationals was against the Boks, has created an illusion of comfort.
The President’s Council determined that White was the right man to lead South Africa to the World Cup. They were comfortable in everything White was doing and expressed confidence in his so-called World Cup plan and in his team’s performances for 2006.
Apparently they also accepted White’s belief that Santa Claus lives.
Flying White to Cape Town from London to give him a pat on the back, at a cost of R40 000, was a farce and another example of the flaky fiscal discipline one associates with the South African Rugby Union.
The President’s Council, devoid of individuals with the rugby technical background, was ill-equipped to analyse White’s Boks. The structural weakness within the national organization was again exposed through the absence of a strong National Director of Rugby and a rugby technical committee. It is this Director of Rugby who should have led the inquisition into the national coach and Springbok rugby.
This person should have probed the details of White’s 59 percent success rate in 37 tests, which is less than the Boks historical test winning average of 62.24 percent. White’s success has dropped each year, from 69 percent to 66 percent to 41 percent in 2006. His selections have been poor; his choice of game plan equally poor and his refusal to change has stunted progress. These are all issues a rugby committee should have dissected.
Why could the Boks only score 18 tries in their last 11 tests? Why did they leak 33 tries in the same period? What was the explanation for crushing defeats at home against the French and All Blacks? How did the Springboks lose 49-0 to Australia in Brisbane and 32-15 to Ireland in Dublin? What technically was wrong with the Boks in Dublin that Ireland broke the Bok line on 18 occasions? Why were blokes picked and played out of position all year?
How difficult was White’s schedule when compared to the demands placed on Andre Markgraaff in 1996 when the Boks played the All Blacks five times, Australia twice and France twice in France? Or how different was it to Harry Viljoen’s 2001 when the Boks played the French three times, the All Blacks twice, Australia twice and a potent England at Twickenham? How different was it to every one of Nick Mallett’s years in charge or even Rudolf Straeuli’s? The fact is it wasn’t that much different and ever year the Boks have a difficult itinerary.
But it is expected that Springbok teams cope. Only New Zealand can compare with the production line of talent produced in South Africa. The expectation on the Boks is rightfully high and it is unacceptable when a Bok team gets thrashed twice in South Africa, as happened against France and New Zealand, and loses so easily against decent opposition away from home.
There should be a consequence to these results, which there was not otherwise White would not be the national coach this morning.
Asking everyone to be supportive of the national coach and to project an image of sunshine does not address the problems pointed out in this column. The Boks, in 2006, did not play good rugby and the national coach has not once given the public an explanation as to why this is the case.
The public should not be accepting of SARU press releases that state the coach explained to the President’s Council that his World Cup plan is on track. What plan? A plan that produced three wins in 10 against the major World Cup opposition? A plan based on picking 12 white players out of 15 on average every weekend?
Springbok teams cannot settle for second best and the paying public should never accommodate the kind of mediocrity the well paid White’s well paid professionals have produced.
In 2006 we’ve been forced to watch a clueless Bok team and then been subjected to the ramblings of a coach who has perfected the art of coming second and convinced the 14 provincial presidents that he has actually come first.
The New Year cannot come soon enough. Enjoy the man in the red suit with the white beard because he apparently also has a World Cup plan for White’s Boks.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006
November 9th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Olivier wtf did he do wrong?
November 9th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
#186 Sheriff: tatum keshwar?
November 9th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
#189 Pearl Rose: key difference between JW and PDV:
JW loses – Keo hates him. JW wins – Keo loves him, pushes his book like it’s opium, erects a life-sized statue of JW in his living room.
PDV loses- Keo hates him. PDV wins – Keo hates him.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
we can argue why they lost, but 2 things are not arguable:
1) transformation is selection based purely on skin colour
2) the midweek side that lost to leicester’s 2nd team is not the next best set of players in SA.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
#193 cab:
The midweek side was never supposed to be the next best set of players, otherwise the Emerging Bok players would all have gone on tour.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
#194 David:
but then why is mr oregan hoskins calling this squad a ‘merit-only’ squad?
merit only means the best players in SA, not the best players of a certain colour in SA.
i am not arguing for the merits or demerits of transformation, i simply stating what it is and what the present bok squad is.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
#191 Pearl Rose:
Yes, thats the one.
Tokka was involved in a controversy a few years back in NZ; it seems like he has changed his mind in the meantime.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
#195 cab:
I suppose it depends on what he considered the reference point for merit. If it was as backup to the existing Bok squad, then other players merited to go instead. If it was to get a look at the potential of young players who didn’t get much exposure at S14 level this year, then their selection was merited.
I reckon it all depends on the context of the purpose for selecting the extra dirt trackers.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
#193 cab: to remedy what exactly cab…you are most definitely right on your point no.1 AND NO APOLOGIES NEED TO BE OFFERED!
November 9th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
#196 Sheriff: come on sheriff, toks said that woman was annoying, loud & acting like a groupie and they were trying to relax…she should’ve never put herself in that situation. plus Toks thought that word had stopped being hate speech!
November 9th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
#199 Transformation:
Tokka has been transformed.
He is breaking bread met South Africans across the spectrum these days