4 South African Teams make up the Super15 Top8

sharkbok

Captain23,297 posts

sharkbokCaptain23,297 posts

14 Jul 2013, 19:24

#1

14 Jul 2013, 19:24#1

4 South African Teams make up the Super15 Top8

Team Nation P W L D B PF PA PD Bp Ttl 1. Chiefs () 16 12 4 0 2 458 364 94 10 66 2. Bulls () 16 12 4 0 2 448 330 118 7 63 3. Brumbies () 16 10 4 2 2 430 295 135 8 60 Wild card teams 4. Crusaders () 16 11 5 0 2 446 307 139 8 60 5. Reds () 16 10 4 2 2 321 296 25 6 58 6. Cheetahs () 16 10 6 0 2 382 358 24 6 54 7. Stormers () 16 9 7 0 2 346 292 54 6 50 8. Sharks () 16 8 8 0 2 384 308 76 8 48

sharkbok
Captain23,297 posts

sharkbokCaptain23,297 posts
14 Jul 2013, 19:32
#2

14 Jul 2013, 19:32#2

Given the Sharks and Stormers had such poor seasons, on the positive at least 4 of our team's made the top8.

It was just the Kings who allthough not a total embarrasment who finish at the bottom of the log.

Cheetas seemed to have a much better season that both the Sharks and Stormers, especially their overseas tour so it is surprising to see they are only 4 and 6 points ahead of the Stormers and Sharks respectively.

For the Sharks the big loss from last year was clearly Michalak.

The performance of the Sharks backline was hopeless for much of the year, and their 2 best performances were the games that Lambie was not at 10.

Time to rethink if Lambie needs to be back to 15, and we bring in a specialist flyhalf like Timo Swiel.

Butch's body will not be able to handle SuperXV anymore. Given the depth issues we have in flyhalf , not millions of options available.

The Sharks were unfortunate at inside centre with initially Fat Steyn overweight, and then what;s his name breaking his wrist that turned out to be a whole tournament injury.

Alberts and Bismaark have brought back some much needed physicality in the forwards for the Sharks.

The Stormers also missed Peter Grant this season.

The Jantjies experiment provded largely to be a failure.

Asswagen yestreday put in the best performance of the season at 10.

The Stormers need a physical 10 who can take on the advantage line.

It was a season of what could have been for the Stormers who never lost games by much and missed many close ones, and beat many of the top6 through the tournament.

The Stormers lose Habana and Andries Bekker for next year, both are probably first choice players in their respective positions from all SuperXV teams.

When Bruno came back from injury and got a few games under his belt the physicality returned for the Stormers.

Questions need to be raised why both the Stormers and Sharks had such bad injuries during the tournament.

Although the form of many players was questionable before they even got injured.

Hopefully the IRB sort out a longer offseason for players and probably injuries will decrease and all players will be able to deliver more consistent performances during the season.

CL
clevermike
Coach57,555 posts

CL
clevermikeCoach57,555 posts
14 Jul 2013, 21:44
#3

14 Jul 2013, 21:44#3

Sharkbok I do think that the huge number of injuries of both Stormers and Sahrks players played an extremely negative role insofar as performances are concerned, but there were other problems as well;- The Stormers had serious backline problems - starting with Jantjies. Because of his intital failure at kcikijng at goal, it became essential to play players that was hugely inadequate in defence (De Jongh, Aplon and Pietersen) or alternatively brought nothing in attacking play either (De Jongh and Pietersen). With Jantjies whose defence is normally non-existent in the mix and no real backline penetration- the Stormers could not really produce the goods ever. Aside from that the Stormers were hampered by injuries to their loosies and had often enough to rely on "B" team loosies . The absence of Etzebeth in particular cost them dearly. In the case of the Sharks - I do not agree entirely with you about Lambie at flyhalf. Lambie got the wrong end of the stick by trying to play the Morne Steyn game - which he was not really equipped to do. There were secondary problems as well - maybe even worse than Lambie. The Francois Steyn failure at 12 and the absence of Whitehead as an alternative inside enter - was probably even a bigger problem than Lambie. They also lost Jordaan and Pietersen and Mvovo was off for lengthy periods. Bismarck was also a real problem absenc and the Sharkks buggered around too long with Burden - they should have brought in Cooper must earlier. Du Toit's injury problems left some gap in their lok situation as well. I think at one stage the Sharks had to do with 19 players being injured from their squad of 36 players - all at the same time - and they could not even put together a full 33 member team for some games. They rushed back some players and those produce nothing in most games they played in. It is rather questionable why so many Sharks and Stormers players had serious injury problems - whilst other than Goosen and Brussow - the Cheetahs had minimal injury disruption. A player like Labuschagne missed only one game due to a relatively minor injury and they were able to get Oosthuizen back into the team as well. While I do not want to be seen to use the injury story as a reason for sub-par performances by the Stormers and th Sharks - I think that that problem - combined with non-performance by key players - resulted in the drop of the two teams on the log compared to last year.

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