19 Dec 2016, 02:48#1
...with victory in sight ,Montpellier were leading 23- 19 from tries to Nadolo, Mogg and Alapusi Quera.....it all came undone after Willemse got sent off and Jannie DuPlessis was sinbinned...
..and while Montpellier were down to 13 men Castres capitilised with a try and then a penalty kick to give Castres a much needed win...too funny
...discipline should improve though after Jake White gets the boot at the end of the season and a real coach is installed .ie. a Kiwi coach
CLclevermike
Coach57,555 posts
CLclevermikeCoach57,555 posts
19 Dec 2016, 03:11#2
You must be careful not to criticize Mozart's favourites - both players can do no wrong and Jake White is the best coach SA ever had,
Montpellier was lucky to even come close - Fat Fransie did not play - if he did the tries by Mogg and Nadolo would never have ben scored,
DEDenny
Captain12,893 posts
19 Dec 2016, 06:24#3
".....and Jake White is the best coach SA ever had"
Point me to one better.
CLclevermike
Coach57,555 posts
CLclevermikeCoach57,555 posts
19 Dec 2016, 09:07#4
Denny = Christie was a coach far above what the self-seeking White ever was. He did not need Eddie Jones to back him up in the WC.
19 Dec 2016, 10:59#5
There is no questioning what good Louis Luyt did for SA Rugby. The fact that Kitch Christie played a major role in the 1995 RWC victory is also without doubt. To say that Christie is far above White as a coach, however, is a joke. It has to be.
Christie became the coach because Luyt did not like McIntosh and he wanted "his" man in charge. That was probably one of the worst kept secrets in SA Rugby ever. Nobody can say that McIntosh would have won the RWC but no one can say that he would not have won it either. In addition, one can also only speculate whether Christie would have been able to win a RWC title had he had the job to start a four year cycle and "build" his own team.
I'm not saying that Christie was not a great coach. I am just not all that sure that he was as great as many would like to believe.
To compare him with Jake White and to say that he was far better is ludicrous. A lot of people reckon that Christie's team would walk through fire for him. Exactly the same can be said of the 2007 team. Many say that it was a master stroke of Christie to play play Mark Andrews at 8. Jake White was the one who moved James Dalton from flanker to hooker early in his career. Everybody jumped on PDV's back for playing John Smit at tighthead. So what, Jake White was the one who actually moved John Smit from tighthead to hooker early in his career, and PDV knew that John could play tighthead. The wisdom to move him back to tighthead and even to rotate him between TH and hooker is another question, though. Jake White appointed John Smit as his captain and backed him through thick and thin, despite constant critique from all and sundry and he was correct all the time.
Christie had the unqualified support of the president of SARFU/SARU at the time and nobody of the SARFU management dared question him and the govt did not meddle in the affairs of SA Rugby. In fact, Mandela's main concern, at the time, was to keep the whites "happy" by showing his unqualified "support" for the team. Jake White, on the other hand, had everybody breathing down his neck. The so-called supporters, Hoskins and SARU, the politicians, the domestic coaches and most of all the media. They, with Rudolph Lake leading, were fighting an active campaign to get rid of White less than a year before the 2007 RWC campaign.
DEDenny
Captain12,893 posts
19 Dec 2016, 11:03#6
I agree, it's ridiculous comparing Christie with White, I'd want Christie over a longer period of time as national coach to make a fair comparison.
MAMachiavelli
Club Pro323 posts
MAMachiavelliClub Pro323 posts
19 Dec 2016, 16:49#7
Kitch was - at the time and circumstances - a great coach. Like almost all of these "comparisons" this one too is flawed. The circumstances were entirely different, the political climate was entirely different and professionalism in rugby was at it's very infancy.
I suspect that had Kitch found it necessary to deal with the likes of the current SARU lot and have Mbalula to contend with as well, history would have a very different story to tell.
It is cool to compare and evaluate one entity against another, however we need to remain logical in the comparison and evaluate like-for-like. Comparing Kitch to Jake is like comparing a Gatling gun to a modern laser-sighted 50mm M2 Browning machine gun. Each a significant tool in its own era and war.
Then again, many who read stories in the MSM are equating coaching skills to the massaged image built by unscrupulous journalists who sell thei r rags based on the level of sensationalism they are able to create.