JL du Preez

These small locks  are already 27 years old…time to move on.

Dan has potential. Or at least had potential. He should have been the replacement for Steph in 2018, 2019 the latest. It was one of those coaching blunders that really let the team down. Dan has the strength and explosiveness that Steph never had. He has the skills that Steph never had. He also has combativeness. We need more of that psychological hard edge. The team has too many softies, and that's why we can't dominate in areas in the field where we used to. Nobody is afraid to run at us anymore. We used to strike fear into the best All Black sides because they knew we hit and hit with intent. I recall an Englishman, the name escapes me, who made a break and looked up. It was Schalk, and he panicked, dropping the ball. He knew what was coming his way. In the 2007 World Cup, Butch, Frans and Fourie made teams afraid to attack the inner channels. We don't have that fear factor anymore. Opponents attack whomever they like wherever they like. We have opponents running hard into the seams. This should be the most physical areas of the field. The softies are good at one thing though: they take orders passively and operate the details of the plan exclusively. If you want a highly scripted plan, they are the players to go with. They aren't a challenge to your authority, they are easily coerced with smooth words, and they will go with the flow. All hallmarks of weak leadership that is afraid of pushing for real excellence. 

Rassie was never a physical loose forward for the boks. He had size, was a good player, but not amazing. He would not be in my team of loose forwards in the same decade as others that played with him. 

Korne Krige was a real hard man. Not the smartest person around but a wonderful and pragmatic human being. I’ve met him a couple of times and he remembers me playing against him at school. I was playing for Durbanville against Paarl Gym and we destroyed Paarl Gym that day put 50 points past them that day. We were both open side flankers. It was unheard of for them to lose let alone by so much. But we had a really hard big pack. 

He use to go fishing with one my friends. The same friend who was massive gym fanatic was gushing over Korne physique. 

Korne is my height, he didn’t feel that big. I was 97kg at the time, but I was told he is all muscle. 

Krige was a good player, and definitely hard as nails. He just wasn't a good leader in my opinion. Or at least he was unfortunate enough to be under a Bok coach who encouraged violence. I know it wasn't a good period for us, but never did I ever feel the Boks were soft. That 2002 team was sheer brutality. It's interesting that Jake White was the assistant coach when the Sharks made the super rugby final. It seems that Straeuli piggybacked off of his work. You're quite privileged to have shared the field with a Bok. 

In the 2019 super rugby season, Dan was marginally better than Thor and led all South Africans for offloads. In fact, he was one of the top five in the world at the time. Dan is a freakish powerhouse. But dynamism is against the core of the Erasmus model. He wants stale ball control. Offloads add an element of unpredictability. 

These small locks have been tried several times at test level and they flop. Good at club level because of effort and relative size…poor at international level because of speed, hands and decision making. Look I agree Dan might have been better than Dud Toit but so would your pet poodle

Dan has not been given a decent chance at test level. Like Esterhuizen, I think Erasmus has set him up to fail as well. Erasmus only opens up the game plan for his core group of losers.

Esterhozen must wondering what he needs to do to get a bit of a run at test level.

I am not a bit impressed with either the A Team or the Springbok team.

Faf and Eben have a better game and the two wingers in the Bok side played a fair game and that is it.

Willie is going to receive a "Klap" soon with his aggression after a whistle.

It is more a case of the Goats than Springboks.

Poor show allround.

The attack wasn't very good, and I wasn't impressed by either wing (I still have to review the second half). We have the new Erasmus gimmick: The shallow three man second layer sliding around the screen with a two-man run on the outside edge. It wasn't very effective. The stats don't tell the full picture. Protection of ball at the breakdown was very poor, handling was poor. Lots of blind, dead-end runs. Despite the gimmick, there really wasn't much in the way of holding or manipulating the defence. A few runners between the defenders with hit-ups. It was more a case of pools of bodies trying to get the ball wide, very little thought. It's so heavily scripted, and easy to see coming.