I know many years ago coaches use to say that the best teams only lives in the coaches head or on paper and that a coach would almost never have their best team on the field given the nature of injuries in form.
How often do you get a chance where every player is world class or the best in their position. NZ and the boks came close to it. Even Engl, Fra and Ire, not to mention Wales were flirting with this.
Then you can have a team of all stars but it doesn't mean that this team will play the best as we saw with Madrid or other teams that just buys the best players. In some instances like Toulon, teams are able to get success, but at international level you can only pick from your own country unless you are Australia or NZ who have for many years raided the islands which now all the other unions except for SA and Argentina following this trend.
It is great to see that Rassie used 50 players in one year with some good results bar two games they should have won.
However, I think under some former coaches we capped about 70 players in one year with indifferent results.
My biggest fear with this approach is that we simply don't know who our best team is and whether we will have the cohesion.
None of the performances were polished and we had moments in the games where we blitzed teams only to lose shape towards the end or start really poor.
We have such good quality players, but you honestly can't tell me that Bongi is really better than Marx. Marx is a classic example of the best hooker in the world that can play flat out for 70 to 80 min. We have guys list Steph and other guys in the team who's value on the field for the entire games is far greater than just having them there for 40 min and not knowing what we are replacing them with.
Given the rugby climate and sheer amount of games, it makes sense to manage players minutes, but we are still not allowing them to rest given there involvement in so many games. So everyone are not just on rotation.
In a perfect world, with limited amount of games, where players are managed and managed to peak at the right time, I would back the best 15 any day over 50.
We saw this happening back in 2006 where all the boks were playing in SA. Players got proper rest periods, they started their super rugby season later and were primed for the Tri Nations. New Zealand did the same and their key all blacks sat out for the first 6 games. It was hard for them to catch up but at the business end they were delivering the goods.
However, the biggest threat is club rugby. France being the no 1 culprit, the other clubs are desperate for games and the season is getting longer and longer. We saw how the European Cup had its formatted expanded and it looks like there is no end. Clubs in the north are losing so much money and often stadiums are half full. The also have a capacity issues as many stadiums are limited to seats, Bath being a classic case that simply can't add a stadium.
kingcorn
Senior player2,866 posts
I know many years ago coaches use to say that the best teams only lives in the coaches head or on paper and that a coach would almost never have their best team on the field given the nature of injuries in form.
How often do you get a chance where every player is world class or the best in their position. NZ and the boks came close to it. Even Engl, Fra and Ire, not to mention Wales were flirting with this.
Then you can have a team of all stars but it doesn't mean that this team will play the best as we saw with Madrid or other teams that just buys the best players. In some instances like Toulon, teams are able to get success, but at international level you can only pick from your own country unless you are Australia or NZ who have for many years raided the islands which now all the other unions except for SA and Argentina following this trend.
It is great to see that Rassie used 50 players in one year with some good results bar two games they should have won.
However, I think under some former coaches we capped about 70 players in one year with indifferent results.
My biggest fear with this approach is that we simply don't know who our best team is and whether we will have the cohesion.
None of the performances were polished and we had moments in the games where we blitzed teams only to lose shape towards the end or start really poor.
We have such good quality players, but you honestly can't tell me that Bongi is really better than Marx. Marx is a classic example of the best hooker in the world that can play flat out for 70 to 80 min. We have guys list Steph and other guys in the team who's value on the field for the entire games is far greater than just having them there for 40 min and not knowing what we are replacing them with.
Given the rugby climate and sheer amount of games, it makes sense to manage players minutes, but we are still not allowing them to rest given there involvement in so many games. So everyone are not just on rotation.
In a perfect world, with limited amount of games, where players are managed and managed to peak at the right time, I would back the best 15 any day over 50.
We saw this happening back in 2006 where all the boks were playing in SA. Players got proper rest periods, they started their super rugby season later and were primed for the Tri Nations. New Zealand did the same and their key all blacks sat out for the first 6 games. It was hard for them to catch up but at the business end they were delivering the goods.
However, the biggest threat is club rugby. France being the no 1 culprit, the other clubs are desperate for games and the season is getting longer and longer. We saw how the European Cup had its formatted expanded and it looks like there is no end. Clubs in the north are losing so much money and often stadiums are half full. The also have a capacity issues as many stadiums are limited to seats, Bath being a classic case that simply can't add a stadium.