Irish News : Resurgent Springboks look like serious challengers

Rassie Erasmus has returned an exciting South Africa side back towards their best

Herschel Jantjies scores his match-saving try for the Springboks against the All Blacks. Photograph: Mark Tantrum/Getty Share to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to Email App South AfricaWho are they

Not too long ago, South African rugby was in the doldrums. The once mighty Springboks were beaten by Italy at the end of 2016, before suffering pretty dismal defeats to the All Blacks (57-0) and Ireland (38-3) during a difficult 2017 campaign. However cometh the hour, cometh the man. Rassie Erasmus left Munster to take up the role of South Africa’s director of rugby in December 2017, before succeeding Allister Coetzee as head coach in March 2018. Since then, the Springboks have hardly looked back, earning a number of eye-catching results with a squad full of an exciting new generation.

Perhaps the first sign the Boks were back came last September as they beat the All Blacks 36-34 in a Rugby Championship thriller in Wellington. Their resurgence has continued into this year’s Rugby Championship, with a 35-17 win over the Wallabies followed by a 16-16 draw with New Zealand - again away in Wellington. The Springboks will bring their usual uncompromising physicality to the table in Japan, which is complemented by some thrilling backs such as Cheslin Kolbe and Aphiewe Dyanti. Add some experience to the mix - Willie Le Roux, Eben Etzebeth and the returning Francois Steyn - and the Springboks look to be in a very good place.

Munster’s loss has proven to be South Africa’s gain, with Rassie Erasmus currently doing a very good job of returning his native country to world rugby’s top table. He has found a nice blend of youth and experience, promoting South Africa’s racial quota system and improving the strength-in-depth all the time. This Rugby World Cup is a staging post for Erasmus’s Springboks project but even so they are in a position to seriously challenge in Japan.

Siya Kolisi missed the opening rounds of the Rugby Championship with a knee injury sustained towards the end of the Stormers’ Super Rugby season. The inspirational 28-year-old became the Springboks’ first ever black captain in 126 years in 2018, and is the talismanic figurehead of the Springboks’ new breed. In his absence the looming Eben Etzebeth has been taking the armband. Still only 27-years-old, he already has 77 caps to his name since making his debut against England in 2012. Not a bad back-up.

• Pool B: Rassie Erasmus’s Springboks can turn over the All Blacks
• Pool B: Results don’t tell the whole story with Conor O’Shea’s Italy
• Pool B: Canada last but not least in qualification for Japan

Herschel Jantjies thrilling emergence in the Rugby Championship is a real coup for the Springboks heading to Japan. The 23-year-old scrumhalf scored a brace of tries on his debut against Australia before producing another to save the game against the All Blacks next time out. A sniping, waspish presence at the base he also runs excellent support lines. He is not a certainty to start ahead of Faf de Klerk in Japan but is an exciting and dangerous option for Erasmus to have.

The Springboks have won the tournament twice but their victory on home soil in 1995 is the greatest. Nelson Mandela handing the Webb Ellis Cup to Francois Pienaar, after South Africa’s 15-12 victory over the All Blacks at Ellis Park, is one of rugby - and sport’s - most enduring images.

Winners: 1995, 2007

Someone is getting carried away if he believes the "Boks have returned to their best." They cannot and will not be at their best unless they know how to execute tries.

Yes - The Boks have peaked................

The AB's did not even get out of first gear - In fact it looked as though they didn't even want to be there.

So all and sundry are recognizing the improvement in the Boks under Rassie but a few resident oaks here. 

Stick with Beeno on the issue. The Boks have definitely improved. They are now at 4 in the rankings and are definite contenders. 

All thanks to our great coach who is achieving great things dispite the odds. 

Beeno

Mozart was the biggest supporter of  Meyer around and always viciously attacked Erasmus in the past,   So when Erasmus was appointed Mozart immediately took to demonize him as coach - especially in view of the strong games against the AB's.

Instead of admitting that the team has developed well after the appointment of Erasmus - they have to find a way to demean any Springbok achievements and made totally unproven claims about weakening of the sport in NZ and Australia.  

They do not accept that scoring of tries against opposing teams shows development. Mozart routinely disregards try scoring as important and said it openly over the past few years when defending some players like the Steyns.

Anyway - we know his approach on players.   It has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with pet hatred of some players.  He promotes the .interest of failed players by giving them outrageous ratings and writing tripe on site.

That is what I call Idiot Speak - because it is based on anything bar team and player performance.     .            

2017

1. 7 Wins
2. 2 Draws
3. 4 Losses

Idiot Speak BSter - to count whom they played and the fact that Erasmus using f experimental teams in three matches to try and built up a squad of reliable players,  Some of the players failed in the process and it is especially the failures you supported 

Anyway the sorry you come up with is utter BS as well.   Meyer was appointed in 2012, Coetzee in 2016 and  Erasmus in 2018 - any realistic comparison should be between what happened in those three years - not selecting non-comparable years.   Two other comparative years are 2015 and 2019 - both being WC years.  

The fact is that Idiot Speak on site has been firmly established by you, Mozart and Pakie - so keep it up - it is too funny for words. LMAO    

Mozart

What does the following mean:-

"Perversely they take pride in that, even though the causation is from Eraser who is totally South African ....to Munster, not the other way round."

Please explain - since in reality it to my mind represents total contradiction or worse still total BS.  

His experimental Boks outplayed his best XV against Wales. Largely in part to the efforts of Andre. 

How about the other sides? I did a breakdown of new caps per game several times already. You lied. You were exposed for the lie. It's becoming rather tedious to retrace the same old ground, reposti ng the same information because you lie the same lie ad nauseam. 

"any realistic comparison should be between what happened in those three years - not selecting non-comparable years."

Actually, the very best comparison between two coaches in this circumstance is the last year of coach A and the first year of coach B. Did Rassie improve the Boks? The answer is, on defence, maybe. The gameplan is so conservative that they don't leave themselves as exposed as they were under Coetzee, but that doesn't mean the defensive systems are necessarily better. I'd say they've improved, but not as much as some think. All of the attacking output is inferior to Coetzee's last year. We lost more games in 2018 than 2017. Therefore, we can conclude that the Boks were not as improved as you say. The saving grace this year is a horrible Wallaby side and an All Black side in decline. Even with these two being in a weakened state since the Rassie era, he still can't better most of the production of Coetzee. This is not an opinion, this is an irrefutable fact. 

Well beeno the Boks have improved that is for sure but after last 5 years it would be bloody hard for the Boks to have got any worse now wouldn't it.

CF all one can ask is that a coach improves the team and given the results against the wee abs there is no doubt about it.

Mike, Meyer was a competent, solid coach but cant be mentioned in the same breath as Rassie who is as good as it gets. Meyer was predictable and had one style of play which relied on Fourie du Preez to execute. He was fixated on the renowned show pony wee matfiled 103 kgs, the guy who lost us the test against the wee abs. Had we won that match we would have won the RWC.

Meyer was the most versatile coach we've had. He varied the gameplan according to personnel, incorporating elements from each union for key participants of the gameplan on the day. Not even Jake did this. Rassie has one plan in mind, and will stubbornly persist with this Stormers gameplan. Rassie has turned the Boks into the Stormers. Same stodgy phase play, same faces , but with more aimless kicking. Coetzee and Rassie are South Africa's punishment for its mistreatment of Meyer. The gulf between he and Rassie is alarming. 

AO

Meyer himself indicated that he thinks the Springbok backline players did not have the skill set to play a ball-in-hand game and he based his player selections entirely on what he believes was reputation - ie what he believes the players were capable of - forgetting  when they were capable of producing the goods.

That does not make for being a versatile coach - matter of fact it indicates a flat world approach coach with very little versatility,   His game-plan on the way was the same throughout his coaching as a Springbok coach  as flat as a pancake.  

Meyer had no idea about what a game-plan entails and watching tests in his era was a punishment - not a pleasure.   It was totally predictable what would happen in every game when he had Morne at flyhalf until the Peth disaster,   Aimless and inaccurate kicking was the norm and you complain about what is happening at present,  Agreed about the fact that there still are too much kicking going on - but the difference of the past and the present is stark.

Under Meyer and Coetzee kicking was NEVER strategic or to put the opposition recipients under pressure,   It was clear he did not think and coach to get a strategic kicking game in place where balls could be followed up and pressure be applied on the opposition - it was all about aimless kicking because it was possible to kick.  

Meyer was even bigger punishment than Coetzee was - bu t both represents serious punishment of SA Rugby,   Anybody not seeing that is guilty of Idiot Speak and of formulating something that never existed - such as a constructive Meyer game plan. 

Mozart

I asked a decent question nd had no respond from you.

Just two simple questions :=

*    How many away tests against the AB's  did the Springboks win under Meyer and how many home and away tests did they drew?

*    What is the record of Meyer in tests against the AB's?  

Simple enough questions to answer.  

About your question who won the test and how many tries were scored in the process.   Should those stats not be part of your question?

Rassie hasn't faced a good Wallaby side and faced the All Blacks after they peaked in 2016 and 2017. Before you perform any kind of comparison, you begin there. Not to mention the defences which were much stronger back in 2012 to 2014. 

If you were to say that Rassie chose a sensible South African friendly gameplan, that Coetzee was idealistic and too reckless. I'd agree with you. If you said he brought some stability to the game, making it more suitable for the World Cup. I'd agree. To say that he is the best coach, better than Jake or Meyer? No, that is absolutely not the case. To say he has brought any kind of revolution to the Boks. Absolutely not. To go so far as to say the Boks are a better attacking side, playing a more modern game? That is either ignorant or the product of a forked tongue. 

The Rassie camp - I don't belong in any camp - are overshooting their argument, going from a position they can defend to doing cartwheels in a minefield. Take the advice of Meister Auge: Keep it real. Simples.

Huffer is slowly coming around. He just needs to manage his retreat carefully!

Mozart knows he is talking tripe and he wont admit it.  AO is just totally ignorant about rugby as a game and dream up things that never happened as to Meyer's ideal game plan - a figment of his imagination going against what Meyer himself said and did. .       

Meyer had a 4 year stint ahead of him till the next RWC...he got a much better team from Snôrre than he gave back to Coetzee...One can't actually compare his results to any previous coach....maybe Mallet, but mallet got a much better team from Carel.

 There seems to be better team spirit and a lot more fight...and we were very competitive against NZ....all new positives. Glass half full scenarios...

Meyer didn't inherit a team. He lost Bakkies, Victor, Smit, Fourie, Rossouw, Brussow (injured), Schalk (injured), Butch et al. He had two brief sessions in the build up to the England series. He had to rebuild that pack. Bekker pulled out after flubbing, he lost a few to injury. Either way, losing 5 of your first 30 tests is not a bad start. He left behind far more than what he started with. 

Who did Meyer leave behind? 

Etzebeth, Willie, Damian, Serfontein, Kriel, Pollard, Strauss, Lood, Malherbe, Thor, Reinach, Nyakane, Mohoje, Jantjies, Kolisi, Hendricks (Health concern intervened). 

Who did Coetzee leave behind? 

Am, Bongi, Marx, Whiteley, Coetzee, Kitshoff, Mostert.

That's just off the top of my head. Both coaches left behind new talent. Usable players. Those in my list I don't rate are regarded by the experts and plastics. Then Rassie had Esterhuizen, Mapimpi, Dyantyi, Nkosi et al fall into his lap. The entire spine of his team is made up of what Meyer and Coetzee left behind. 

England won the last two, Wales won the last two, Los Pumas won game 2 - a losing trend. Our best performance of the year was the All Black test we lost at home last year, because J-Raz had to tinker at the most critical stage of the game. Apart from Scotland, we looked impotent throughout the EOYT. There is so much hype surrounding Rassie it beggars belief. 7 loses to Coetzee's 4 and we are on a upward trend! It reminds one of the 7 game losing streak of the Sharks in 2015, a "new Golden Age now the shackles of Jake" were broken asunder. Fueled by nothing more than a bitterness against the previous coach. Lügnerin only supports rassie with so much fervour because he is the anti-Meyer (in his mind only). It's absolutely hilarious that Rassie is everything Son of Geppetto has been claiming Meyer was. Everything to a t.  

We were 2 year out from the RWC. He did not have the luxury of experimenting only in the safe matches, he had to start from scratch after a terrible stint by the Boks...plus he had to replace numerous spots in the Bok squad...

Meyer played a few Bok stalwarts right into a retirement village, only blooding new players when injury or retirements forced his hand...and then he even went out of his way to get some of those retirements back into the game...it was absolutely shortsighted and naive to the extreme.

Rassie had only a few basics players to build on after Coetzee, and look at our squad now. Our only real weaknesses are in midfield and openside and although the incumbents are no world beaters, we have cover for them too....as in almost every position.

 Meyer went all in with JdV, Matfield and FdP...some other oldies too...blooding minimal new blood. When Jean and Victor got injured, the backups had very little xp....after 4 years of building the squad.

All in all, Rassie gave a few players opportunities...and his pics payed some dividends...for those who can actually use a bit of discernment. 

I'm not saying Rassie is better than Meyer, I'm saying he was forced into a different approach by having so little time and that he seemed to have made mostly the right choices. Measuring him against other coaches who had 4 years to build is dishonest and grossly unfair.

GO BOKKE! GO RASSIE! SCREW THE BITTERBALL NEIGH SAYERS!!!

Start from scratch?

He had Pollard, Faf, Jantjies, van Zyl, Papier at halfback. Blooded test players.

Damian and Kriel, Esterhuizen and Am - the latter pair the form SA centres of super rugby 2018. Mapoe was another strong performer freely available.  

He had Kitshoff, Marx, Bongi, Beast, Malherbe, Koch in the front row. He gave Thomas his debut. 

At lock he had Eben, Steph, Lood, Mostert, Jenkins. He gave RG his debut, but RG has been on the fringes. 

In the backrow we have Kolisi, Louw, Thor, Whiteley and Steph (played both lock and 7). Kwagga was given his debut, but floundered against Wales. 

On the wings Rassie made his mark. Mapimpi, Nkosi, Dyantyi, Kolbe. 

When all is said and done, all he had to do was rearrange a few pieces. There were a lot of test veterans at hand, to build the team around. This was no overhaul. 

Indeed, Go Bokke! I never take pleasure in a Bok loss. 

So here we have the detractors o f the Springboks going strong.   AO gave a list of players Erasmus inherited - but never indicated how many tests the players played under Meyer and how many under Coetzee.   

Something both did not deal with is how many players lost their mojo being coached by Meyer and Coetzee.   Fact is effectively both Pollard and Le Roux - who were never used by Coetzee - were two examples where players became flat when playing under Meyer and some lost confidence under both Meyer and Coetzee.

Part of what Erasmus achieved was to inspire confidence in individual players and in the team as a whole.    That in itself cause a turnaround in approach by the players and in team spirit.  It was not only the physical improvement in player performances that impact on the outcomes of matches - it is also their attitude that have a positive effect pm the team.

The panelists mentioned confidence as a factor and even refer to absence of such confidence for the last 5 years - which obviously include both the Meyer and Coetzee era.        .    

How many times Lügnerin? I posted a thread on this on the 27th of November entitled "Starting From Scratch?". Remember that? 

https://www.ruckersforum.com/forum/augen%C3%B6ffner/starting-from-scratch-/28189

Seeing as you are too lazy to read that. Here's the breakdown, again: 



The new caps by Rassie, starting and from the bench. 



Why must we continually cover the same topics over and over again?

Note: caps don't include this year's starts. This was posted at the conclusion of last season. 

Of the long list of players provided by AO the following are fit for playing test level and still in the squad:-

Meyer

There are 16 players n the list who played in some test. 

11 players of quality and most had very few matches before the 2015  WC and when they did play they were mostly on the bench.  Some had to play frequently during the WC  because Meyer's selections resulted in 8 duds not being playable.

Of the 11 consequently only 5 could have been regarded as seasoned test players by he time Meyer left.

There were also 5 dud selections who are not in the squad anymore. 

Coetzee

Coetzee also added 11 platers to the list of players and of those  only  4 remained in the present squad,    The other 7 are not in the squad anymore,

So what happened about the inherited players?   The 15 players he inherited had to be re-orientated and confidence building was essential,  They were players who for years has been poorly coached.

From the 30 on the list 15 is still in the squad,   The rest had to be tried out in the tests last year to see what they can produce and the result was they were not really test level players at all. 

The inheritance was a mixed bag of value.   Erasmus had to start with the 15 from scratch having to build their lost confidence and with team spirit re-building.   Meyer and Coetzee damaged them badly from that perspective.        

The wriggly wee wirm on the move again! 

While I think Erasmus has done the right thing by reverting to the rush defence there remains a lot to be desired of the Boks no show attack. He should not be afforded any credit for the tries scored by Herschelle Jantjies.

Nobody ever said there are not some problematic positions where improvement would be very necessary in the main the best available player have been identified and the rest dispose of,  

What really is ignored by AO since he does not understand what really happened.  I mentioned some of the best players like Pollard and Le Roux got totally disillusioned and losing their mojo  and confidence under Meyer and rarely used by Coetzee as a result.    This did no t only apply to the two players - but to all 15 of which 4 are n fact used from the bench and rarely sarted because they are not the best players available.

The inheritance was a mixed bag of value.   Erasmus had to start with the 15 from scratch having to build their lost confidence and with team spirit re-building.   Meyer and Coetzee damaged them badly from that perspective.            

The implementation of Willie was at its peak under Meyer. He lost form in 2015, that is not the fault of Meyer. Pollard was at his most elusive under Meyer and was injured for a good portion of the Coetzee reign.

This is where you come undone, taking a leap from reality to your own dark and twisted imagination. How is it possible for you to misunderstand this? The players needed to have crisis confidence building sessions under Rassie? They had to be reorientated. Listen to yourself. I genuinely believe that your relativism has reached a level where you could literally be a danger to society. 

Let me explain again - le Roux and Pollard lost form in 2014 and 2015 because they lost confidence and was not able to implement an idiotic game plan - if indeed there was a game plan at all. 

Try what happened to Pollard  after the AB test in 2014.  End of year tour started twice and benched twice,   He was forced into a game plan that turned him into a kicking dummy and his contribution in 2015 was totally insignificant - also in the WC his contribution was insignificant.

Yes Mozart - it definitely happened.   It was under Erasmus that he regained his mojo and started to play real rugby again.   Meyer did a lot of damage to a lot of players - especially backline players.  He knows zilch about backline coaching and if he had a game plan it was never consistently applied,  bar perhaps the fac t that in the WC the flyhalfs got about 20% of the balls passed by the scrummies.   Predictability ruined everything - especially backline play.          

Try what happened to Pollard  after the AB test in 2014.  End of year tour started twice and benched twice,   He was forced into a game plan that turned him into a kicking dummy and his contribution in 2015 was totally insignificant - also in the WC his contribution was insignificant.

Yes Mozart - it definitely happened.   It was under Erasmus that he regained his mojo and started to play real rugby again.   Meyer did a lot of damage to a lot of players - especially backline players.  He knows zilch about backline coaching and if he had a game plan it was never consistently applied,  bar perhaps the fac t that in the WC the flyhalfs got about 20% of the balls passed by the scrummies.   Predictability ruined everything - especially backline play.