Big difference between Ireland and the Boks at half back.

Face it the Irish outside backs are as unimpressive as ours, Henshaw aside. And their pack is very impressive at lock and in the front row, as is ours. .. That leaves the loosies and half backs. The Irish all Lions back row is cited as a big strength. But Stampkar was invisible in the 3rd Lions test. O’Mahony also fizzled out.....leaving Sean O Brien as the real factor. Kolisi will have to step up.. Still we should be able to match them if Stephanie and Louw impose themselves. .. But Sexton and particularly Murray are a league above our Saturday halfbacks, particularly on soft fields. I wonder what compelled Coetzee to give up on Pollard.

 Elton's pigmentation. 

Jantjies does have a better kicking game, where Pollard offers more on defence. I would back this season's incumbent player- if he has had enough time to recover from Jetlag- and play Pollard off the bench. The bench player should outplay the starting player.

 Mozart
If it was only the half-backs - but what about the wings and the loosies?  The Boks may have the upper hand in the Tight 5 - but in nothing else.

 Jantjies is obviously the incident player, but he wasn't with the team the whole time, which might be a negative, unfortunately the numbers are more important than good sense.

This is likely to be a very tight test, with a fast Irish defensive line and little space. Not exactly the conditions that suit the Jantjies game. In the Newlands AB test the Boks looked more effective in this rugby version of close combat when Pollard subbed on.

Pollard is indeed the man to take on a flat defense. Jantjies only took on the line twice against the All Blacks, both times in darts close to the tryline. The guy who created the space for at least 40 of the meters on Serfontein's odometer on the day was Cronje. Outside of that Jantjies couldn't make anything happen.

 Would have been interesting to see what DdA cpuld have done 2 years ago with the sort of front foot ball Cronje gave Serfontein in the last test. I hope DdA can step up to the plate, but he is yet to show the form that he had in 2015 SR.