Its all bout balance

you all saw the thread bout cruden on attack and it pointed out some great things that we need to focus on. alot of folks in sa expect the individual to do everuthing but in rugby each position and mini unit is pretty tied up into how well the others do. its a tight-knit relationshi. and thats where new zealand are historically in the modern era are better.... they have that better balance across the board even if they might have inferior individuals in certain positions. for years they have had kak 9s and locks and they were kak under the high ball and battling the territory game but they adapted and learnt to shore up the weak areas. we dont! take it like this, a great kick is determined by the chasers for the mos part and a ball carriers success s tied into how well the runners around him work. cruden can create guessing games ONLY because of the runners around him. even though you know 9 times outa 10 what he is going to do you need to cover him and his runners because you just never know. our guys like to hit it up with one lone runner, our runners dont come into the line at pace and dont target shoulders or angle well at all. morne often times has our centres standing 2m behind him flat footed. look at the clip of cruden. he takes it flat and IMMEDIATELY two forewards shoot into position and give him options. the reason why we did so well last year scoring tries is because willie conceals in a large way the limitations of our centres and he can be an extension of our half backs to get the wings away or spot gaps. Think of it like this, like a mace, our half backs are the handle and our wings the mace.... willie has been the chain that our centres are supposed to be but arent. jean was skipped in most attacking plays last year and i think that tells you how meyer feels that he needs to pave over the cracks because alternatives havent been there like he woulda liked. so yeah, we need to sort our centres out and start focusing on our off the ball running... its such a huge part of attacking rugby... the forwards add some layers to it and strauss is flawless in playing that way. we need him in for sure against new zealand.