I am very worried about the issue of debating abouut players and performances on this Forum. We must admit to be fair that we all have some preconceived oideas and am and often partial about what we write. We make statements that can be debated and I myself say things merely to invite debate because of the controversial nature involved.
The latter issue makes membership of the Board very interesting and really add ot my personl amusement. However, I am and has remained a huge admirer of Mozart. He studies games and stats and uses that to illustrate the contribution made by individual players during games. It does however, leave some scope for debate - as the stats do not necessarily reflect the actual situations applicable when speiific plays happen and that could impact on player reaction under given circumstances. To give you an example - stats indicated the number of times a player for instance kick the balls - but does not indicate the nature of the kicks made - was it relieving kicks, startegic kicks or territory gain kicks, but most importantly the result and outcomes of the kicks.
However, we now have a new member from Argentina - with a really awesome analytical mind and real knowledge of the game. He is a very talented youngster that studies rugby like a scientist and the of impact of laws on rugby and carefully analyzes each player. The amusement part becomes a learning process when dealing with Cruz. Witness what he says elsewhere on the site about Brussow, JP du Plessis and Pat Howard under other threads. That really is a sound analysis of what the position is and I believe it is difficult to argue against that type of scuientific evaluation. In all cases his deductions were was spot on and based on fact.
What worries me is that our dear members - with dozens of preconceived ideas and statements reflecting unfound preferences - like Saffex, the Cat, Beeno and a few others and even myself may have hissy fits or their hearts will attack them - if they read Cruz's contributions. LOL. Maybe I should add the latter to my sources of amusement. However, in the short time Cruz has been a member - if you really want a sound analysis of issues of real importance you can ask him and he would provide an extremely sound answer - leaving very little to argue against.
Maybe the latter aspect will teach us as coach critics something much more of the game and I really believe Cruz is a real new asset to our forum. I for one am going to ask him more questions about specific players and playing strateggy and specific occurences during games and that is a challenge that could be of benefit to all members.. I suggest you do the same - and maybe we could all learn from what he says.
Saffex and Mozart - there has been a discussion of Francois Steyn's performances in the tests this year. Mozart says - based on statistics - that it was not great performances at all. Similarly much is said about Hougaard as a scrummy. However, what I want to do now is to ask Cruz to analyse the games played by these two players for us and let us then debate his answers. That really would be intersting to see. Although in general I side with Mozart's overall stateents - the answers by Cruz on the issues raised on those two players will definitely add value to what we discuss on those two players. .
