Plum
I read the heading ad wondered whether De Allende has a doctorate in center play?
I think you are a bit unfair about De Allende's defense. He had some really good games against players like Ngatai, Nonu and SB Williams - in fact he wiped the floor with them. His test experience initially was all at 13 - with De Villiers playing at 12. When De Villiers was injured in 2014 he moved to 12 for the WC RC tests and that is where there was an initial problem with missed tackles, but the problem was not entirely his own - he played outside pflyhalfs with serious tackle deficiencies as well.
I think De Allende has a problem with tackling players from the side. It happened agaion in the case of the recent Brown try. He tackled a player in-field and the ball came back to the English from the breakdown. It took time for De Allende to get up from that tacke and he started running towards the side where the ball was moving to/ The first tackle was at least 15 meters from the place where the ball was in the hands of Brown after the lattr brok a rather weak tackle attempt by Pollard. Arriving at the ball-carrier he made a serious tactical error by traying to free the ball from Browns hands instead of taking him all out from the side. However, as stated he has problems tackling players from the side - especially when they have beaten other tacklers as well.
Fact is De Allende had wo or three poor defensive games which gave him a bad name as a defender. Mozart started bitching about his defense after the Aussie test in 2015. De Allende made 15 tackles in that game and missed 6 - the number of tackles were very high for a center 0 but the missed tackle ratio was also too high. In most other tests his defense was good to average. For instance in the last two tests he made 17 tackles and missed only 1 - that is way below what is regarded as an acceptable ratio (ie 15% missed tackles).
De Allende rarely played rugby in 2017 due to injury. So lets deal with attacking play. He was initially very good in braking lines and beating defenders. In Super Rugby in 2014 he made 27 line breaks beating 72 defenders. The same type of ratio appeared in the 2015 tests he played in - he was for instance the players in the 2015 WC who beat more defenders than any other center in the comp.
Now back to the present scenario. I think the defense has worked out that De Allende would beak tackles at will against a single opponent, so they now have to use two or even three defenders to stop him from making line breaks. When tackled by two or even three defenders there is always the \danger of a possession loss - which happened twice on Saturday
I think that if opposing teams have other worries outside or inside of him - they would not concentrate their defense on him only. However, that has not been the case and I think the need to strengthen that situation so as t divert attention from him alone.
Of the players who played at inside center over the past decade I would rate them as follows:-
1 De Villiers
2 De Allende
3 Olivier
4 Fat Fransie
Olivier was a very static crashballer - not really physically strong enough for the position. Fat Fransie was a total disaster playing on lower level for years now. In the tests he played in in 2012 he was a disaster. In two cases he tried to make relieving kicks from the red zone the balls rolled along the ground and it put the whole team virtually off-side.
On defense in Super Rugby he was worse than De Allende was and his attacking play was virtually non-existent. He was more know for possession handovers and in 2014 he handed possession over by BS kicking and ball striping by the opposition a record 32 times and was penalized 8 times for hanging onto balls at breakdowns, because he was a known ball-hogger. No wonder Plumtree in 2013 said he is no center at all.
I think that the best solution would be to play Esterhuizen at 12 and De Allende at 13. The two physically strong players together would lead to serious problems for defenders and would automatically open up the attacking play much better,
