Do Saffa teams need 10s?

Our 9s kick way more than our 10s do. So much so that I'm starting to wonder if our 10 needs to be able to kick well, or even at all. Andre Esterhuizen may as well have been the Bulls 10 yesterday.

Occasionally you see the cross field kick come into play...at an extremely low success rate. Very occasionally you find the 10 kicking a high bomb. And then that's about it. I mean, what's the point? One may as well have a 10 that is more of a centre and much more athletic, and you can job out the restarts and place kicking to anybody else that is able to do it. I mean, what's the difference between the 9 kicking an up and under the 10 doing it - apparently zero, because the 9s kick 90% of the kicks a team is gonna kick.

Looking at the Bulls game last night, Pollard got hardly any ball. Granted he had a shyte game anyway, but how are 10s supposed to influence games when the 9 is doing most of what the 10 is mean to do?

And that's another issue I have with this box kicking idiocy. The 10 has time and the angle to see what's happening. He also has time to communicate with those round him. Perhaps he doesn't have all the information but he has more than the 9 has because the 9 is constantly busy and barely gets a moment to look up. So you get the robotic box kicking that isn't really taking the situation on the field into account and instead attempts to play rugby via automation.

It's worth adding that a 9's work rate is way higher than a 10s and thus, by default, is likely to produce more errors than a 10, due to being fatigued.

Meanwhile the 10 is there to take restarts and kick at poles.

Just more ramblings

Agree plum, Papier was awful last night with no pressure. The bulls start getting better when they started to bull to hand. Pollard is a spent force and for so many years he was used to negative rugby. He can't get out of that decade of conditioning. However, you look at Pendercast running the show, good passes, draw players set up plays and creat so much Havoc in the midfield and draw in so many players. Where as standing in no man's land with no shape or options around him. No sense of getting your players in line or shape. That fumble that led to the first try is poor incompetence from a once great player.

They need to allow pressure on the 9 again. They are treated like holy cows and the fact that they can have their hands on the ball is the worst rule ever brought in. Once the 9 touch the ball with his hands it is game on