Springboks and management made a lot of enemies in SANZAR lately. None more so than the writer of the following article. Spiro Zavos was always a critic of South Africa and after this last 3 weeks we gave him all the fuel he needed.
The loose cannon of world rugby is not the gregarious Brendan Cannon, a Fox Sports commentator, but the Springboks and their coach, Peter de Villiers.
It is now an infamous rugby incident that Cannon was required by the Springboks to apologise for calling de Villiers a ”clown”. Fox Sports was wrong to force Cannon to grovel.
De Villiers and the Springboks are not just clowns, they are dangerous clowns. Their attacks on referees, their refusal to accept the laws of the game or the just punishments handed their thuggish players, their abuse of other coaches and the absurd claim of a conspiracy against the Springboks are part of a sinister attempt to undermine the best elements of modern rugby.
This sinister attack is inflaming Springboks supporters to unacceptable levels of paranoia. Even more importantly, the attack is a direct challenge to changes in the way the tackled ball is refereed. These changes represent the best reform since the introduction of the ”use-it-or-lose-it” principle.
The Springboks want a return to the negative game that rewarded kicking sides and punished sides trying to run the ball.
From being the dominant side in world rugby, the Springboks have become (out of South Africa, at least) an ordinary side. On Saturday night they were decisively beaten on points (literally and metaphorically) by a Wallabies side that smashed them at the breakdown and refused to kick away the ball. The Wallabies kicked 11 times (which must be something of a record in minimalist kicking) and the Springboks 16 times. This high-octane, ball-in-play style was too fast for the monster pack and the ”might is right” system of the Springboks.
After the thrashing they complained about being unfairly penalised at the rucks. They have a policy of illegally diving across the ball at rucks. At Brisbane, it was noticeable how many times Springboks tacklers ended up at the back of the Wallaby ruck where they interfered with Will Genia’s clearances.
The yellow card given to BJ Botha was offered by the Springboks as proof the conspiracy exists. This is nonsense. Slow-motion vision shows Botha deliberately plonking his body over the ball to kill it before cynically raising his arms as if to suggest he had got there by accident.
The Springboks just don’t get it. They insist they won’t change their game to take into account the realities of rugby in 2010. So they are deliberately trying to undermine the new interpretations. The hope is, presumably, that the IRB might restore the kick/pressure/penalty game that was so favourable to them. The IRB must stand firm against this recalcitrance. In my view, if the Springboks get away with their Justice4Boks campaign, the cause of entertaining, skilful, running rugby will be put back years.
This brings us to the Wallabies-All Blacks matches in Melbourne and Christchurch in the next two weeks, to be refereed by South Africans. During the Super 14 tournament, South African referees sometimes were, in a word offered by a New Zealand rugby writer, ”generous” in their decisions in favour of South African sides. For these Tri Nations Tests, though, and the others in South Africa, we want the IRB standard that encourages open rugby, not the Springboks standard that thwarts it.
OK, mu 2 cents worth:
Bokke play dinosaur rugby and are just not good enough to play anything else than kick and chase. Harry Viljoen had the famous “no kick” game to try and instill intelligent rugby. Carel du Plessis tried to impart his vision without success. Pieter Div tried in the beginning and then gave up because the so-called senior players (read Bulls like Matfield) wanted to play Neandertal rugby. Not even WP/Stormers can play anything else than kick and chase. Cheetahs are the only ones that can try to play a running game.
So, my take on it, forget about the trinations for this and next season and start to play a new game without the guys opposing the “new” game, and here Matfield is the main culprit. Bleed young blood, the Vermeulens, the Potgieters, the Bekkers, etc. Just think of a back row like Vermeulen/Potgieter/Burger or Vermeulen/Potgieter/Brussow.
Kick the assistant coaches to hell and bring in new blood, Rassie or Proudfoot as forwards coach and Slaptjips as the backline coach.
Nothing wrong with old Divvie, he wants to play a modern game, he must just pisck the players that are willing to do it!
And shut old Divie up, he is his own worst enemy!!!!! Let Morne du Plessis be the Manager and do the talking.
Easy.
@ Boerboel:
All good and well to do that , but what if we take two seasons to catch up in playing the new game the NZ and Aus teams are doing NOW. They might have perfected it even more and moved on to stay that meter or 2 ahead of us.
We must not start this catch up thing again. Last year we took the lead and the results was spectacular, in a winning sense. Yeah they criticized our kicking game but we perfected it, it was something new, something that caught them with their pants on the knees. And they could not handle it.
At the moment we do not execute 2 parts of our game plan to perfection. The CHASE and the TACKLE. Just look at Habana, he is there sometimes but he miss the tackle, last year he brought the catcher down almost every time. If you tackle the catcher there it is miles of advantage, almost every time 30 plus meter gain with the whole pack moving in hitting the retreating defenders going back to their own line. It will still work if executed with the same conviction we had last year.
I can not see us leading the pack by trying to play their game plan.It was never before the Springboks type of game. We simply dont play that flashy running game.
What if we try it and after a year see that it is not for us?
We’ve tried the running rugby thing -after heavy critism by the ozzies- since the time of Hennie Muller with no success. The bulls have shown if you play according to your strenths and execute well you can win and play good rugby.
The problem is not how we play the problem is that we trying bulls rugby without the right personel. The bulls and stormers play a different style but PdV select essentially stormers and bulls players and then try and play bulls rugby with the wrong no9 and loosies not properly schooled in how to play the pods.
It worked in 2009 because we had Brussouw who could do what Stegman is doing at the bulls and we had FdP who could do the box kick.
To hell with this asshole (writing the article) trying to indicate we play the wrong rugby. It is one of the essential fundamentals of the figting arts that if you fight and opponent who is exceptionally good with a particular fighting style (for instance; fighting wide) then you do the opposite (fighting narow).
Who determine what is the right style? We’ve always been able to score “grand” tries within context of the style of rugby we play. Why must we adhere to the Ozzie definition of what is stylish rugby?
If we want to play differently that change will take a decade or longer to be made; we’ll have to change the way our schools play and not just one or two schools but all school rugby and then in 10 years we’ll have a pool of rugby players who can play differently. In the process you’ll notice that the the size, built and composition of the players will be change as you cannot play Ozzie rugby will the tall, heavy forwards that we currently have neither can you play that style of rugby with the likes of Morne Steyn, Frans Steyn, Wynand Olivier and so forth.
Go and look at the form and athletic ability of players like Genia, Quade Cooper, Matt Gitua and tell which of the current South Africa rugby players have the same athletic abilities not even to mention skill set?
Everytime we loose we want to change how we play and then we go through one two disaterous seasons before we go back to our strenghts. We don’t need ot change how we play we just need to refine or structures and execute better.
@ McLook:
In your first sentences you hit the nail on its head. I said yesterday , tongue in the cheek 😀 that the problem is WP players. Indeed like you said we play the Bulls style with the wrong players there. Yes some of the best is also missing due to injury but last year we had only 3 WP players in the team of 22. Now we try and play a distinctive game with 7 WP and 9 Bulls who played 2 totally different game plans whole year.
A more astute coach MIGHT , just maybe combine these players to play a good game. But with the assistant coaches also playing their own game plan i think PdV is losing the coaching battle. He must get some guys that can assist him in that.
this is rubbish!!!!!!
There is nothing wrong with playing the Bulls type rugby, but you need to ensure your team doesn’t become predictable. The reason why the kick and chase is not working is because it is predictable.
There must be a balance. When you are in your 22, when there is a 22 kick off, when there is a kick off from the middle line, and once in a while use the kick and chase. The up and under becomes predictable, with the rush and drift defence there is gaps just behind the defences of the Wallabies and All Blacks, so do a little grubber, but perfect it. I you then don’t also run the ball at least hlaf the time, you are predictable.
Itr is also the wasy we choose to run the ball, we will hit the line with our forwards in the channel one area with such regularity that it becomes ONCE AGAIN predictable.
What SA rugby needs is variation. The basics are obviously there, we did it last year.
Line outs, Scrums, rucks and mauls etc. But is is in the creative department where we lack, our players continue to run in perdictable lines or simply just drift towards the touch line.
If we want creative rugby we need creative players, Juan de Jongh is one of those examples, he sidesteps, he is nippy. But we also need our players to run intelligently, don’t run away from your support.
The Wallabiers and All Blacks have a very simple philosophy on defence. two guys, one tackles and the other goes for the ball. It is their communication that works. We will have two guys there, but they both go for the tackle. Therefor neither can play the ball.
On attack the Wallabies and All Blacks have a support player on each shoulder, so as the runner gets tackled, support is there to either recieve the offload, or support at the break down.
It is not rocket science, it is a simple gameplan that they employ. The other thing they do with great success and this is why we miss tackles so often. They have their support runners run into gaps, but also at angles, therefor putting the focus of our defenders in a flat spin, so we are not sure who to tackle. We sometimes will have one runer off the ball and once again it is simple mathematics as who to tackle.
Then their players are always looking for the support player immediately when they either break the line, or have an overlap. They simply play as a team and fully understand the concept of team play = winning play.
What do we have, two tries begging this weekend because Zane and Wynand are to fucking stupid to look around and pass to the next man.
Anyone with half a brain cell can see and understand that coaching is the problem. Pieter de Villiers is in essence a moderately successful u/21 coach and you can not compare Gary Gold with Gert Small (who have coached first class rugby since he started as Carl du Plessis forward coach.
Dick Muir had one season with moderate success at the Sharks; compare that with Allister Coetzee who took the Stormers to a S14 final.
If it is the new rule interpretation that is making all the difference why then didn’t it make a diffrenece in the S14?
New Zealand is not playing any different from the way they played last year. The difference is we have a totally different team (6 changes and three positional shifts) as the one that played in last years tri-nations.
True New Zealund did improve their execution but they are not playing any different then last year in terms of a different game plan.
Boerboel – You contradict yourself in the first post.
You blame the bulls and vic as dinosaurs but then you want the most conservative s14 coaches(read proudfoot and rassie) to join that bull dinosaur backline coach.
You raise some valid points though.
I cannot fathom how Dick Muir, who lost all his S14 games with a run-come-hell-or-high-water approach can run the bok backline. We are worse than having no flippen backline coach. As for glitter: The stormers are proof that he is a fake.
First of all let me say this: Spiros is a clown, a dangerous clown.
Springbok rugby has always been of the slow poison type of rugby. Starve the opposition of possession, kick into the corners, and when in the red zone, play the ball out wide for the strike players. We have always had good backline players, such as the Du Plessis brothers, Danie Gerber, Ray Mordt, Bryan Habana etc.
What the Bokke are not doing is executing their game plan 100% they are at about 90-95%, and at this level, that is huge. I fully agree with Biltongbek about the support play. Its something I have been an advocate of years. The support players are so important, almost more important than the ball carrier, for the very reasons Biltongbek says.
And the tackle is an area where SA will try to cut the ball carrier in half and drive him back, but we have never been as smart in the tackle as we could be.
Snorre should tells his assistants what game plan he wants, and they must implement, because at the end of the day, its his ass on the line. And the combination of Gold and Muir, could actually work very well, as they would bring the balance between too much structure, and helter skelter attack. Its up to Snorre to bring these guys and senior players onto line.
We can run the ball. Look at the game against France.
Superbul,
What is this bull about playing Bulls rugby? Did the Bulls play 10-man Bulls rugby to win the S14 this year?
fender wrote:
As far as I read the point is not that the bulls played 10-man rugby. The point has been made that the boks try and play like the bulls and just can’t get it right. Yes the boks keep kicking their possesion (away which is not what the bulls did) mostly becuase they don’t know what to do with the ball. Bulls on occation played three game plans in one half. Thy kept mixing it up; pods, box kicks, bacline play, crash runners, 10-man game you name it the bulls kept the opposition guessing. Boks can’t do it and the question is why because 1)the coaching is trying to duplicate something they don’t understand 2) the players fall back on the S14 gameplan because the coaching sucks.
I’ve played in provincial u/20 sides where the dominant players where from one club and because the coach of the provincial side sucked we just fell back on the club game plan/moves/structures and so forth. It work as long as you have enough players from that particular club in the key posisions. I’ve got a feeling that is what is happening here; players fall back on S14 coaching but the players in key positions is not in place to make it work. Last year it worked because they had FdP to bring the variations and Brussouw to make the pods work and Juan Smith who have played with all the senior bulls players long enough under Jake White to slot in with that particular style.
SPIRO ZAVOS 😡 😡 :mad
STUFF YOU CHINA…………
hugs @ 12
😆
On a more serious note, even i can see our problems lie a lot with the coaching or maybe lack of coaching.
And no….. i am not blameing Snorrie so much, more the other 2 coaches, he chose them, made a mistake and must now get rid of them.
BUT……….. i think Snorrie is a man that is very loyal with a strong sense of integrity (sp) and wont just do it willynilly.
I also think i players are mentally exhausted and that it gets worse the more games they lose, meaning, i think if they had to win a few it would be like a vitamin B shot on the bum and revitilise them a bit.
@ Ashley:
Hello Ashley, how are you, what are your thoughts on this bokkie dilema ??????????
I have also mentioned Spies a while ago, before it seems everyone else noticed or wanted to mention that his tackleing and going forward with the ball was not as strong as it should be for a man of his size, just wish someone would tell him to do a APLON and tackle and carry the ball forward as if his life depended on it
He would be so good then. Oh, i know i dont write things down in rugby terms but you all got wives or girlfriends so you know what i mean 😆
hugs @ 15
what dilemma? 😉
..
ag seriously, i think
1. it can be rectified
2. theres still quite a few players that should come back from injury and make a huge difference
3. i’d rather have this happen now, than next year
but
1. we need to learn the lessons from this period, like:
pdv need to concentrate on his coaching and leave the handling of the media to someone else and/or learn to handle the media better
2. most importantly, we need to adapt to the ref on the day!!
Ok i am on a roll now, and there is now one here so am going to vent.
Smit has lost a lot of weight, there is no big boop or major love handles hanging out of his shirt, there is also no jowly face to show excess weight, he is a big man, and as far back as i can remember watching rugby, forwards are rather large, you need a bit of weight to push a scrum as well as muscle, dont you?
I do think some of the team, him included, need to go on some kind of conditioning program, didnt Jake white do that with the team before the World Cup, I remember he was rather strict, so maybe what our team needs is a Nazi Prick of a coach to sort them out and not a nice softie.
@ Ashley:
I think Snorrie is who he is, and the way he talks is strange but part of his personality and that doesnt affect the coaching.
I think the press has a go at him cause he is an easy target and no one is used to a man in an influental position talking the way he does.
As for the clown comment from Australia, he should have laughed it off and not made an issue of it.
And now for the Biggie.
WE LOSEING BECAUSE THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH SHARKS IN THE TEAM LIKE LAST YEAR.
😆 😆 😆 😆 😆
Have finished my tirade.
Ag issie Treehugger….they are missing two Cheetahs…that’s why 🙂
Brussow would have made a huge difference
ja ja ja
i know what you’re trying to say (20, 21)
theres
too
much
stormers
players
in
the squad! 😥
…
😥 you’re not my friends anymore 😀
@ bos_otter:
Also true 🙂
@ Ashley:
BUTCH UP SISSIE
hugs @ 24
hehehehehe
I put most of the blame with PDV and his selection of assistant coaches. This then leads into a situation where the blind leads blind and selections get mucked up.
He needs to pull himself together, if you are going to caoch an international team you know you will be criticized as that sells newspapers, so learn to accept it, dont utter any sentences beyond, “yes” “no” “thank you” ” goodbye”.
Find better asssitant coaches and work on a game plan, make up with Frans Steyn, get your selections right, and be careful when you make substitutions. If not, then please resign.
Edward walks out of a bar, stumbling back and forth with a key in his hand. A cop on the beat sees him and approaches.
“Can I help you, fella?”, asks the cop.
“Yesssh, ssshombody ssshtol my car!” Edward replies.
The cop asks, “Okay, where was your car the last time you saw it?”
“It was at the end of this key,” Edward replies.
At this point the cop looks down to see that Edward’s penis is hanging out of his trousers. The cop asks Edward , “Hey buddy, are you aware that you’re exposing yourself?”
Edward looks down sadly and moans, “OHHH GOD…they got Julie too!!!”
Shame, drunk, out of luck and having to walk home.
biltongbek @ 28
lol
yep, i’ve been drunk before, but luckily not that drunk (yet)! 😆
@ Ashley:
LOL so glad you know i am not really being horrible.
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