Captain49,914 posts
04 Aug 2018, 18:03
#1
04 Aug 2018, 18:03#1
This team was motivated, and they were gutsy. They pounded the Crusaders ramparts, but they lost because they couldn't establish forward dominance and the backs were not good enough.
Firstly and crucially the Saders had a plan to deal with the Lions' forward strengths.....the rolling maul which so often doesn't work in these really big games....and secondly the ball on the deck, where Marx was pounded by the counter ruck which seemingly arrived instantly.
Secondly the physicality tookaway the Lions' improvisers.....Kwagga, Whiteley and Jantjies were brutalized by bigger men. They were non factors, except for Jantjies who was a negative factor.
How many times didn't Jantjies provide negative mo, with missed goal kicks, misplacedup and unders, foolish passes and silly decisions. Once again he cost his team any chance of winning.
Thirdly the backs were out of their league. Until Dyantyi came on there was no pace. The centres were clueless with a torrent of front foot ball in the Saders 22. About the only thing decent they did was the Mapoe back tackle. And poor Combrink finds the gap, but he is sooooo slow....and then misses a one on one for the Saders first try.
The truth is we simply don't have enough good players to win this thing. If the Bools and Lion's player pools were combined, a player like Pollard could have made a difference today getting the. Backs onto the front foot. Snyman could have added some grunt.
This tournament which is now a Boreathon needs to be played with 12 teams and we could have 3 decent teams in the mix....guys like Vorster, Skosan cant be there. And frankly the whole Kwagga movement needs to be reassessed, against international level he was neutralized, perhaps a better option against the likes of Oz....he is not an option against NZ.
And well done Saders who showed us yet again that defence wins big games.


