Zane Kirchner
Morné Steyn
Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer is likely to surprise with a few unpopular decisions in his 2015 Rugby World Cup squad.
According to weekend newspaper reports, the inclusion of flyhalf Morné Steyn and fullback Zane Kirchner could be the biggest shocks in Meyer’s 31-man squad for next year’s showpiece event in England and Wales.
Kirchner has fallen out of favour in recent times after the emergence of Willie le Roux, while Steyn has fallen behind Pat Lambie and Handré Pollard in the flyhalf pecking order.
Sport24
Steyn hasn’t played for the Boks since his mishap late in the Rugby Championship Test against Australia in Perth when his failure to find touch with a penalty late in the game enabled the hosts to counter-attack and score to sneak victory.
However, Meyer is keen to see the Boks improve their tactical kicking, which could see the return of Kirchner and Steyn.
Meyer said he wanted the team to get the right balance between attack and defence.
He also denied dropping Steyn for his mishap against the Wallabies. “I wanted him to work on certain aspects of his game and he has done it,” said Meyer.
The 2015 Rugby World Cup runs from 18 September – 31 October 2015.
Hier kom dit nou!!
Ek kannie wag nie… hehehe
No point in bringing them in and dropping them again. If he decides on that route again he must give them a fair chance to settle back into that. He gave Willie le Roux quite a few chances in a row now and lets face it that surprise factor is gone, he had quite a few mediocre games.
2 @ superBul:
Good points.
I’m don’t know anymore whether I can believe what Meyer says, the part about not dropping Steyn for the missed kick and asking him to work on his game, sorry, but I just don’t buy that. It’s probably because Pollard also missed a vital touch against Wales, so now he is covering up for his double standards.
At this stage I don’t really care who he selects or doesn’t select, I think we all saw that whoever he does pick, together with our current game plan, doesn’t really work too well in the NH and against teams who, unlike the AB’s and Aussies, prefer not to run the ball from all over.
@ nortie:
Non gaan jy kak boet.
Die hoof onderwyser vat nie die sulke opinions oor HM nie. 😥
@ superBul:
Ek stem
but I dont see a mention of Meyer to bring kirchner back?
I wouldnt mind though, the guy took a lot of heat.
Then again WHY would he come back, because of all the public pressure?
Chances are he will also retire from international rugby after one or two games 😆
nortie wrote:
If we played Steyn against Ireland we would have won, ugly but still a win
5 @ MacroBok:
It is a RAPPORT speculation… nothing Heyneke Meyer said or did… no matter how others try to colour it.
Anyway, I’m at the PUB!!
@ Victoriabok:
Had we played Steyn all tour, Meyer would (rightly) have been criticized for not exposing Pollard and Lambie some more to the conditions up North.
His three men are Steyn, Pat and Lambie.
I would prefer we play the pool stages with Morne and giving both Polly and Lambie chances in alternative games and take it from there.
@ Charo:
😆
Dit is n feit dat na 3 volle seisoene het HM wel 60 spelers wat hy ken of reeds probeer het maar hy HET NIE 26 nr EEN spelers nie.
aka n SPAN
@ superBul:
ek dink niemand het 26 nommer 1 spelers nie? dit is mal diepte, en wat van die ander posisies?
@ MacroBok:
Wat ek bedoel is dat HM nie sy ideale span reeds bymekaar het nie. Ek dink hy val nog rond. Kom met baie se goed maar ons lyk nie soos n goed gedrilde span nie.
MacroBok wrote:
An average Nik Naks Man is way better than Willie if he loses his confidence and turns into shyte, like in the Wales test
@ superBul:
Baie van die “se goed” is ook maar ne5 bespiegelinge.
Ek dink sy ideale span is redelik vasgestel en geen geheim nie.
Beast
Bissie
Jannie
Eben
Vic
Louw
Alberts
Duane
Fdp
Morne/pollard/lambie
Habana
Jdv/fransie
?
Jpp
Willie
Ons probleem is 13 en dat geen speler loskakel sy eie kon maak nie.
Maar ja ins het almal seker al n miljoen keer oor dit gepraat. Omgespit geplant en geoes dan weer geplant oor en oor.
Of dit nou die regte span is is n heel ander gesprek natuurlik.
MacroBok wrote:
Daai 3 het na al die jare nog nie wedstryd na wedspryd gedomineer nie. n vorige Bok coach het uit die bloute n werklike kragman (Tommie Loubsher ) gekies en dit het die hele Bokspan opgefire destyds.
MacroBok wrote:
MacroBok wrote:
Toe Morne die eerste opdraf toets span gehaal het was daar ook baie teen hom gewees, Peter de Villiers het eenvoudig by sy keuse gestaan en klaar. Daai tyd was daar baie meer stabiliteit op 10.
Miskien het HM klaar besluit op Lambie. Dan moet ons maar van Pollard verwag om sy voete op Super rugby te vind. Ek sou Morne my #1 gemaak het
Oor sy voorspelers dink ek jy is reg, daai is sy span, met n swakerige vertonings lys op voorry of te not.
Agter spelers dink ek is niemand behalwe n fikse FduPreez en Ruan Pienaar (as reserwe) seker nie. Willie is klaar windgat, as hy moet hoor hy is n certainty dan is dit eerder negatief as positief.
I read this article, and obviously agree with most said.
Here is a few snippets.
“The knee-jerk reaction after the Irish defeat was to label the Boks a team of old men. It is quite the contrary. There is balance between young and old; as there is with experience and novelty. What there isn’t yet is consistency in performance and the ability to play a game as favourites.
There is no need for panic but there is a need for honesty about the inconsistency within the squad performance”
The increasing involvement of the TV producer is beginning to have damaging consequences
“TV broadcasters determine everything in rugby union. The broadcaster decides on which day the Test is played. The broadcaster confirms starting times. Without the money of the broadcaster there is no professional game.
But the TV producer has now assumed an importance equal to the broadcaster for whom they work. The broadcaster has taken patriotism to another level; started to believe he/she is player 24 and in most instances the most influential of any home team coach’s super subs”
“television replays on the big screen, insistent and continuous”
“It started with a Marcell Coetzee run that had the crowd believing, thanks to repeated big-screen replays, that he had led with the forearm. It was nonsense but it took the best part of two minutes and a succession of replays for the referee to rule a scrum feed. Rugby is, after all, a contact sport.
The crowd was insistent Coetzee should be sent off. They chanted for his departure and for the Irish to be rewarded. Sanity prevailed but it was the exception rather than the rule in the mad world of the television replay”
Adriaan Strauss’s marginal ‘in the air’ challenge was only punished because of the crowd’s insistence that the referee revisit the moment of contact. The referee had played on. His touchline assistants seemed comfortable to continue play but then the TV producer stepped in – and this is becoming the norm.
One replay. Then another, in super-slow motion. Then the crowd buzzed, which turned to crowd irritation and then the crowd chant of ‘off … off … off’ started.
That’s when the referee halted play and referred the incident to the TMO, who gets footage that is slowed down to super-super-super-super slow motion to push the case of the home side.
Any tackle in rugby, when slowed down to a near freeze frame, can be made to look vicious or to have malicious intent. Any pass, when slowed down sufficiently, can be made to look forward and any grounding, when really slowed down, can appear as a knock-on.
TV referrals, like in cricket, were encouraged to limit the howlers and not to replace the referee or the real-time interpretation of the man tasked with the responsibility of officiating the game
technically the referee can never be wrong in union because the complicated nature of the laws means there is always a sub-section of a sub-section that can be applied to any decision.
Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer once told me the laws in union are such that a referee could turn his back on the play, face the crowd, blow his whistle and award a team a penalty and there would be a technical infringement, no matter how minute, that would justify the referee’s decision.
Rugby is too complicated in its laws, many of which are outdated and have no bearing on the flow of the game. Yet referees, often influenced by home crowds, are technically correct if applying them at their convenience.
I am not knocking the referee, but rather the game’s lawmakers and the custodians of the game who should be protecting the referee and doing everything to eliminate the howler. They should also be allowing for rugby to be a contact sport and for rugby to be a fair game in which the visiting team isn’t prejudiced by way of being away from home.
Players simply want a contest. They don’t need to be up against the mob mentality, an official who buckles because of human vulnerability and an agenda-based television producer who has eyes only for his home team.
It’s a crazy situation. The referee must be left to trust his eyes and the immediacy of real-time action.
If you take nearly every touchdown for a try and slice and dice it with modern technology’s super-slow freeze frames, you’d never see a try awarded in the game. The bias of a home crowd is understandable, but the ease with which the mad mob influences referees is not as understandable, and neither is it acceptable
The media only adds to the issue…
By default the English focus on the English players and the South African media largely singles out the performance of the Springboks. There is no match objectivity because the readership asks for a local focus and not an independent view.
“the referee’s integrity is what determines his standing in the global game. What is being challenged now is the absence of integrity from the home television producer”
There are enough complications in travel and touring without the away side having to now also play the television producer
The Springboks were found out for a lack of match preparation. Resting the Boks for the Currie Cup play-offs had merit, but they should have enjoyed a warm-up match before playing Ireland. The core of the match squad hadn’t played a game in more than a month. And it showed.
The scrums and lineouts were good but the cohesion was missing and the basics of catch and pass were almost absent. You can’t simulate taking the ball into contact and the feeling of the body taking a tackle. The Boks looked like a team that hadn’t played a game in a while and the intensity matched a pre-season hit out.
There was intent but that is not the same as intensity. The result was more emphatic than you’d have got from any bookmaker, who had installed South Africa as favourites.
The result was also an emphatic reminder of the folly of judging the team (and country’s worth) exclusively on an ability to win a World Cup every four years.
All above from December issue of Sport Monthly
Sloooow website again. I click on a link and it loads and loads, 5 minutes later I click again then a page loads instantly.
16 @ superBul:
Ek weet nie wie die nr 1 loskakel is nie, ek is seker Morne is onder die top 2… AS dit so is dink ek dit is baie goed dat Pollard en Lambie kanse gegun was, Pollard kort baie skaafwerk in nat toestande, so ek dink nie hy is reg vir volgende jaar se WB nie teensy on n lekker droe oop veld kry waar sy x factor nie geneutraliseer word nie, Lambie was goed teen Engeland maar heel average die res van die toer.
Ek voel ons het baie meer geleer uit die toer deur NIE vir Morne te kies nie veral oor ons “ball in hand” stront in die Noordelike Halfrond.
Ons groot terugslag die jaar is dat niemand werklik perform het in Super Rugby nie, veral nie die agterlyn nie. Ons hoop maar in 2015 is dit n ander storie ander sal ons maar baie oorsese spelers in die agterlyn he wat IN europa perform.
21 @ superBul:
“The bias of a home crowd is understandable, but the ease with which the mad mob influences referees is not as understandable, and neither is it acceptable”
@ superBul:
It is a very odd article, it starts off that the tv producers apparantly wants to feel important and “dictate” the outcome of the match.
In the end it slags of Television replays as a whole, it is all over the place. Does the writer then suggest we ban all forms of replays?
The Coetzee incident was immediately referred to the TMO by the referee. It is therefore the producer and broadcasters job to show replays from all angles… does the journalist have a problem with this?
He/She has tried to prove a “point” by inserting terrible examples to add volume just to force an opinion.
Taking aim at the TV producers is just a poor scapegoat for ineptitude and the extremely technical nature of the laws of rugby.
Taking aim at the TV producer as a symptom and at the center of this “problem” is no different than cutting off the hydra’s head.
superBul wrote:
Define ‘quite a few’.
Last time I checked, he was nominated as an IRB player of the year. Which means he had ‘more that quite a few’ exceptional games.
Problem with Kirchner is that ‘quite a few’ turns into ‘every game’ is a mediocre game.
As for Steyn, well he is just a blot on the Bok landscape and indeed, HM, that will never go away.
@ John Galt:
A “blot” with a ton of record. A record blot.
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