Esterhuizen Highlights vs Australia

If you want to see what Esterhozen can do that Dud couldn’t look no further than the first few moves. His instant pass to avoid contact created the first try. Then his break, intelligent grubber (remember all those horrible Dud kicks last year) regathered and perfectly offloaded to Dud Toit who….you guessed it….dies with a ball while he had support at his shoulder.

Notice Esterhozen breaking tackles at pace….no half pace tractoring that allows the defence to reform. Every Esterhozen break has flashing red lights for the oppo.  

But here’s the biggest thing, notice how he reads the game and gets involved. Going back to Dud this weekend is just frigging depressing

Watch from Minute

3:18, really like how he passed the ball accurate over 20 meter, to create that extra width. Dud can't passed that far accurately, he can only do short passes

3:41, really good pass out the back and pulling 2 defenders in, due to him bashing it up earlier

Every time he took the ball up he took at least 2 defenders with him. He broke the line a few times and get behind the defenders at will. Not to mention the ausie forwards struggled to pin him down. 

Dud would, pause, the make direct contact, but never pass or kick properly 

We'll find out on Saturday to see if the Dud + Willemse combo will fire on Saturday or not. I still think it should have been Libbok, Andrew and Am bossing the midfield. Libbok got some nice holes to run into, thanks to Andre 

As I said in the other post.... Eish... DA is back

As Moz says... it literally is depressing

PLEEEEEEZZZZ don’t drop DDA lads, I beg you…….

Lol

"I see the value in DA, have always much like I see very little value in a player like Mostert"

...yet the same principal apply...

Saffex, unfortunately these are reporters or journalist that sometimes write with biases. The like to blow thing out of proportion a bit. 

Dud is a quality centre and plays his role really well of holding up the midfield, really hard to bring down and can palm off a few tacklers. He was instrumental and swatting 4 welsh defenders in the wc semi to break the deadlock and help the boks get to the final. 

Yet, how many times do we see him break down any momentum. 

He and Bundi Aki play very similar roles. Bundi is not flashy, but for some reason, he plays really well in the Irish system. 

There are not that many 12's at test level that can perform as well as they do. 

The All Blacks haven't really settled on the centre combo, the Havilli / J Barrett + Rieko 

Eng have Farrell, Tuilagi and a bunch others they have tried. 

Ireland have Bundi and Ringrose, the latter being on fire at the moment. 

Australia have no centre combos

Not sure who the French ones are. 

So yes, out of all the test teams, Dud does stand out and is the best, but so is Esterhuizen. 

The boks needs to evolve and we need to get our wingers into the game more. 

We saw what Arendse and Moodie can do. 

Moodie carved up 100m + on Saturday by getting time and space on the ball. 

So I do think we are seeing a changing of the guard here. 

At least Dud can cover both 12 and 13. 

I only call him dud because of his kicking and sometimes poor passing, but compare to the rest, he is top notch

Delande needs to move to the bench to cover 12 and 13 - and even at a stretch wing. 

Damien Willemse had his best year for the Boks last year. His play at 10 has improved significantly.  I don't think he is a 15, where his defensive positional play is not good enough, Too often he is missing from the last line of defence. 
He will probably be a bench option utility back.

Plum, I don't know if Rassie will change. Can't recall him dropping his favourites. He might drop some of his fringe players like the two Jantjies, but the pretty much played themselves out of the team. Skunk Jantjies with his infidelity and Ma se kind Jantjies just not being a great starter or did that well for the Stormers. 

I can't recall Rassie actually completely dropping players from his squad. If anything, it is very hard to get into his squad. Unless you played at Munster or the Stormers, would be your only chance to get in. 

So the player I can recall that he abandoned 

Elstadt, never really made an impact, Du Preeze, only Jean Luke seem to be back not guaranteed. All three brother were given the boot. Robert must feel very unlucky he didn't get a call up. 

Francious Louw retired, Steyn /s retired. Then we have Nkosi and Sapiwe that pretty much removed themselves. Rassie still rates Nkosi but no-one wants to hire him right now. Sapiwhe took roids and removed himself. 

Marcel Coetzee got one chance and never heard of again. He would have been fantastic in the back row. 

Roos can count himself lucky that his still in the squad now Thor is back and seem to be okay. 

My point is, Rassie has his core that he will stick with and continue to use them as long as he can. 

2022 is old news anyway

A great deal of what brings a player down is momentum. The runner literally falls over the tackler. In Dud’s case when he senses contact he stops. He rarely powers into the tackler….so he is rarely upended by momentum.

Instead he slows into the tackle , almost stops and then engages the tractor gear..often multiple tacklers bump each other off and that’s counted as a broken tackle.

All this takes time. So by the time the ball is recycled the defense is reset and the whole thing is a damp squib.

Over and over again we see the same thing. Trouble now is we have Libbok, Am, Moody, Arendse, Kolbe and Willie.these guys need space. They are unsuited to trench warfare. The player who doesn’t fit is Dud.