If you are going to lose an unbeaten record….

….does it matter if it’s by 55 points? A bit embarrassing eh what? Even if the senior plays were kept in cotton wool for the payoffs.

I finally had a chance to watch this game and the handling of the forwards was strikingly good, reminding of when Jake coached the Brumbies.

I understand that at an international level we want to dominate physically, but why throw away the offload. It’s like a tennis player not bothering with the volley because he has an edge off the baseline.

Count him out and Jake shows you something new.

Physicality going threw the line is what makes the offload so dangerous. If we look at the Damian-style squirt balls of 2015, they exacerbated lateral running, especially given that he was stationed so wide initially. Whereas the likes of Kerevi, they breach the line, and the offload sustains the pressure. The offload isn't a big part of the Erasputin model, as it requires decision-making, and is unpredictable in that you cannot preplan where the ball will end up. He likes to control the movement of the ball and have his designated cleaners, etc. Last year, the frenetic headless chicken running caused a lot of problems with quality and continuity of possession. Under Meyer, the likes of Willie came into the line at pace and hit breaches hard. We could do with some of that. It was a better model.

As for the loss by 55. That's a hard one to swallow after a winning streak no matter the circumstances ! 

Meyer's Boks offloaded frequently enough. He didn't want them offloading against Wales in the WC though. A wise decision given what they did to Australia, who were the best-attacking side in world rugby by far in 2014 to 2015. It's a myth that Meyer's Boks didn't play good attacking rugby. He was well ahead of the curve in implementing modern and sophisticated structures that empowered players. His only flaw was giving into media darlings, and they let him down badly. We might have been world champions had Damian and Lood not been Boks! That's the fine line that changes everything. Meyer's Boks were the last good Bok sides. We can, today, field a very physical side, but we don't have a very physical side right now. We have a micro-light backline that can't tackle or punch into the line, and most of our forwards aren't anything special. The front row is looking jaded, the back row is a mess, we don't have a test quality player to partner Eben. Faf is not the force he once was. Last season, our maul looked iffy, our scrum was nothing to write home about, we had a couple of good tests at the breakdown, but really struggled against better defences. Our overall season stats for defence were the worst of all top 10 sides. That was the spine of the Bok model under Erasputin. Had Kwagga and Wiese not been playing, that'd have surely been worse! The former couldn't buy his way into the starting lineup. This team has too much dead-wood. We could field a monster Bok pack, and a far better backline. We will likely never see was this generation could really be capable of. With the way the power is moving into Europe, we could start to fade into obscurity over the next decade. 

Well Deus, you are spot on that Meyer tried to change the boks style of play and move away forward dominance, but he had a couple of glaring flaws in his approach to the games. 

He was right that all the other nations were catching up with forward size and boks can no longer count to dominate physically as often as they did. It is something that will help you, but those team that were brave were able to blunt the boks and go on to win. 

His flaws were that his entire game was based around his favourite players and they were Fourie Du Preez and Victor Mayfield. They were well past their best and he was 4 years to late in the bok team. 

The other problem was that he premeditated which players will come on at what time months in advance. 

This made the senior players comfortable and complacent. 

That's why the guys didn't show up for Argentina in Durban and didn't wake up in time against Japan. 

The other problem was that he took injured players to the world cup in the hope that they would be fit for the quarters. 

He never showed building pressure in the team. 

But, after the disastrous 4 years under Peter Devielliers, we never had any player depth. 

So his other problem was having to use you players like Pollard and Jessie Kriel who were probably too young and lacked experience. 

I disagree with the assertion that he relied too much on old heads, though he did select some. He always went for youth first. It was unfortunate that Flip was injured for the WC. The only players returning from injury that were taken to the WC were Jean and Steph. Steph played little role aside from being bamboozled by the Japanese - something that is common in every test. Jean was actually very good at 12 and 13. What rotten luck that he was again injured in a WC. Meyer expanded the player pool greatly, and competed well with much better Wallaby and All Black sides. How often do we whitewash the NH on back-to-back seasons? The biggest mistakes of the Meyer reign were: Lambie, Damian, Lood, Kriel, Goosen, Kriel. The names the media loved. 13 should have been de Jongh or Serfontein, 12 should have been with Frans and Jean primarily with Pollard and Serfontein as back-ups, Brussow should have been a staple, Matfield should never have taken a backseat to Lood, Malherbe was not test quality (he got monstered by the Scots) , Morné should have been backed fully all the way through and started the WC games. Meyer didn't have the guts to stand against external pressure, whereas Jake would stand by his convictions. 

I completely agree with that assessment…..it’s literally true. If we beat the ABs we probably would have taken the cup. We lost that game to two tries caused by easily observable defensive blunders by Dud Allende and Lomp. It was that tight a game that two mistakes lost us the contest.

The Japanese game. Clearly we were undercooked, not ready for a contest,  that’s on HM. The loss…that’s on Kriel, he missed a conventional backline tackle gifting the winning try.

I agree with Deus that HM wanted to be liked….Lambie, the center pairing and Lomp were all media favorites who flopped. 

I t’s about time a SA side thrashed a club B side

Technically it was the C side

I’m getting to really like Elrigh Louw….a very intelligent player

 @both of you.