Draad
That's true.
Just wish they had better spirit. What I saw from the Sharks last night, that's the energy and synergy that would be great to see from all our teams.
Sure, I'm a Lions fan but the bigger picture means a whole lot more to me. I was actually cheering for the Sharks yesterday. AM, Bosche, DDP, Mapimpi, all those guys. That's what they are capable off and I want it all dude. They way they attacked the ball on the ground...awesome. Territorial play, just as good.
When you watch varsity ball, their backs function as a cohesive unit much better than our SR sides much too often. It's baffling.
Sure defensive tactics at the top are more defined. But where are the support runners, why the plethora of unforced errors, why the slow ruck clearouts and why the poor decision making?
Teams just seem to forget that there are things you can do which the opposition have no control over. It's the old "control the controllable" cliche.
Teams that are full of the "best" players in SA. They should have their controllables down 100%. But when you watch game after game, you realise that they don't. Not even close. And there no eexcuse for it.
When you add those unnecessary errors to the errors forced on them by good play from the opposition, and then look at how small the margin is very often, it's easy to arrive at the conclusion that they'd win a lot more if they just cut out the unforced nonsense.
And its guys like Eben, PSDT, Kitshoff(not so much), De Allende, Bongi and others that one has to look to.
As a coach, it would be perfectly reasonable to say "You guys are supposedly the best, why the fuck are you making mistakes that you've known not to make since high school?"
You could ask De Allende why he is not running off his outside centres shoulder at every single opportunity instead of only rarely. Why at his pace he still thinks running laterally is any sort of advantage to him or his team.
You could ask Eben why he still loses so many balls in tackles. Why his support play is so poor, Even when compared to other local locks. Why he fades so drastically so often instead of bossing proceedings at key moments like. Why he still reads the game just as he did when he first turned pro.
Going through the Stormers, and most of our other teams you could ask similar basic questions about controllables to many of our supposed best players. And for the most part, there aren't really many good excuses for it.
A great example is Dyanti jumping to catch a high ball when nobody was within 40m of him? The guy is a Bok wing FFS? Jumping is purely to gain aerial advantage when necessary. The rest of the time it serves ZERO purpose. He ended up dropping the ball.
Maybe we need to start admitting that our general standard is lacking. We want to play world class rugby but we're making mistakes that would drive my U14 coach insane. Unforced and stupid mistakes. Every week.
