Boks closer to Japan than thay are to Second place Ireland

Here are the latest rankings. We find ourselves back in seventh before the start of the Tour down under. Seems we will be seventh or worse for quite a while. Those hammering HM and his WC team have a face full of egg. 1. New Zealand 94.52 2. Ireland 90.12 3. Wales 85.94 4. England 85.68 5. Australia 83.96 6. Scotland 83.02 7. South Africa 81.84 8. France 79.10 9. Argentina 77.02 10. Fiji 76.54 11. Japan 75.24

Well we have the dumbest rugby press and some of the stupidest fans. Those two forces have led to massive player and coaching selection errors. The one man who was unmovable was Jake White eg on the Watson hysteria, and he was fired for it.....a deep seated loser mentality.

The question is if Rassie had taken over as he rightly should have instead of Alister Clutzee would the Boks be in 7th position. Hopefully not.....
Meyer also stepped down as he was not prepared to accept increased quota targets. 
If Meyer had been retained - would he be number 2 with a) the current squad generation b) The increasing quota targets. (numbers and positions ).
Rassie has fortunately more black depth than Meyer, but he is limited with combinations, not just numbers

Rassie made several huge mistakes right out of the box.....with Stick as his backline coach and Kolisi as his captain. He also folded on the Frans Steyn issue, who was clearly politically nobbled. Three political decisions that set the tone.

Rassie biggest mistake was perhaps accepting the job. 
I think Stick was forced on him, and Kolisi being captain might also have been so. Another option may have been Steroid Boy Rapelle as bok captain.

It's the poisoned chalice. One could almost sense his hesitancy, but if he signed on, it had to be with freedom to act. He seems like a nice chap, I feel a bit sorry for him.....but this job needs a man of steel.

At this rate we will struggle to even beat Fiji. No couch in the world will be able to put together a decent winning team out of this rabble. Our coaching team is 8 years behind the rest of the world. Hear is what I believe is fundamental wrong with our rugby. 1. Administration These guys are far happier with lining their pockets than actually getting our competitions and teams sorted ensuring that we have the best players for the boks. 2. Too many professional players. We have to many teams and not enough quality. We need to cut back and move to a more central contract system to ensure that we keep the best players. That even means those on the fringes. 3. Obsession with youth. I have seen 1 or 2 people on this forum suggesting that we throw Willemse into the deep along with papier. That is madness when. We are to quick the drop players. We should be nurturing these guys. 4. Quotas Yes that old chestnut, just looking at our youth teams and the amount of poor players coming through, along with poor results. We may have beaten NZ a couple of times but we have not won since 2012. Just look at past under 20 results and then fast forward 5 years on and you will see the improvement. We haven't retained hardly any of our youth players. Not to mention that most of the quota players in our youth teams hardly ever make it through.

Agreed, a very smart summary.

Thanks Aug and Mozart, What I meant to say on the youth front. It is no surprise that England started to produce decent players and winning matches that they became nearly un beaten for 17 games. A lot of that had do with the success of their U20 success. England won 3 out of 4, which normally have been dominated by NZ. I think NZ will be in trouble in the next 3 to 5 years if they don't sort their youth teams out. I still think we have a chance, but we will have to bring back those players. They are only 25 and we are far to happy to let them go.