A few surprises hidden in the stats

Always interesting catching what your eyes didn’t see. Here are a few surprises:

1 The Bok centres made only 8 tackles and missed 6.

2 Dud Allende completed no passes in the game

3 Savea made 3 offloads individually, the whole Bok team made 3 offloads.

4 The ABs only gained 1 more metre than the Boks

5 Possession and territory were almost equal

6 The Boks completed 3% more of their tackles

7 The criticized Bok lineout was better than the ABs 80% to 76%, likewise the Bok scrum.

8 NZ were penalized almost twice as often as the Boks

I ended the match thinking NZ were the better team by some distance. The stats say it was a close game. We never had the dominance in lineouts, turnovers and scrums which has turned so many games for us in the last few years.

Still the game hinged on the obstruction call which denied the Bok try. It was a close call, but probably the right one. The Boks had a veryodd defensive set up with almost no Boks defending the middle of the pitch.

And it also hinged on the box kick when we were a man up, fielded by NZ and countered for a try. There was no pressure to kick it was just a reflex relapse to team tactics.

One might also ask what happened to our quick lineout put ins which worked so well last week.

No excuses I have been predicting this for a long time…been a critic of our current style from day one. The stats are always instructive which is why every professional sports team in the world use them.

67.8% of stats are wrong.

67.8% of stats are wrong.

Another finding, every NZ player made at least 2 passes, except for Lomax who made 1. Six Boks never made a pass including Dud Allende and Mapimpi.The ABs led the offload count 12 to 3.

The game were much closer than the score suggested...our gameplan is difficult to replicate at the intensity required to beat top tier teams.

The ball dies with De Lindy. 

Am is not utilized properly. He should have his hands on the ball all the time. 

How often do we see a full backline move. 

The balls either gets kicked away by 9 and 10 ... and if it reaches 12, it dies there. 

Game plan ... ?

Is that honestly the game plan?

3 minutes to the final whistle and we kick the ball away ... ???

Where is the logic in that?

The supposed playmakers are stupid. They have no vision ... no creativity ... and what's really sad about it all, is that the man you guys worship is coaching them to play like this.

Great man?? Yeah right!!

"Am is not utilized properly. He should have his hands on the ball all the time."

Yes, he really played well...Willemse too, in a losing cause they were doing very well.

Mozart rates Willemse as a must at 12.

I'm not so sure.

Does he have a brain? Is he the man to put Am into space? Having another kicking option at 12 is a plus. 

By simply replacing the braindead De Lindy with an intelligent playmaker would change the entire Bok attack.

Even lazy chumps like Mapimpi would see more ball.   

I would play Kolbe at 15 and bring a proper wing in. Someone who looks for work off the ball.  

Then all that is needed is to select a player at 6 that actually plays to ground and contests the breakdown. Someone capable of winning turn over ball.

Get rid of the deadwood at 6.

Give the captaincy to someone like Etzebeth or Marx or Pollard

That's all you need to make an enormous difference.

Go a step further and select a proper 8 ... bring Snyman in at 5 ... start with your best front row ... and instruct your 9 and 10 not to kick everything away. Keep the ball in hand as much as possible.

Tactical kicking is exactly that ... a tactic ... and should be used as such ... not as the main feature of backline play.

Then instead of hiding your quotas on the bench, select properly and turn your bench into a weapon for the last 20.

That's what I would do.

"3 minutes to the final whistle and we kick the ball away ... ???"

Precisely, totally stupid

Watch how many phases the All Blacks go through with the ball, especially before most try scoring opportunities....

We get to between 6th and 8th phase and then kick the ball away, which they then run back at us...

We did two box kicks after we got the lead…..both resulted in AB tries. The first was too deep allowing the mark, cleverly taken quickly by Jordan. Would any of our backs have had the license to do that?

The second was even more stupid because we were 5 points behind and had to keep the ball at that stage. But our scrummies are obviously told to put the ball up anytime the opposition defence isn’t scrambled.

CC we won’t know if Willemse is the answer at 12 until we give him a shot. He seems to be growing in confidence. What we do know is we will never use our good ball with Dud at 12.