Last Chance Saloon closes for Jessie Kriel

Mozart

What a farce about the Japan test being lost by Kriel,  The test was lost by clueless  rugby geriatrics playing clueless rugby designed by a clueless coach.   For example making Burger the stand-in flyhalf did not help either - he spilled ball after ball and your hero Matfield did not ecvn know what Meyer expected him to do,

Find a true reason for that disaster - do not blame a relatively minor incident for the whole backline being outwitted by the Japanese.   As Jones said he was amazed by te Springboks to counter the move leading to the winning try.   Why blame Kriel when the whole match was a sham - caused by Meyer and his clueless rugby geriatrics selection.and non=existent game plan>

I am not happy with Kriel either - but he is not as bad as you make him out to be.   If you want to refer to bad players there is a long list of failures you supported in the past and still support an example being Fat Fransie.   .   . 

That is the worst BS anybody ever wrote on this site,   Coming  from you it is expected.     

Mozart

Even a dud will say against Japan the Springboks should be at least 25 points up near the end of the game and what happened  at the end should not have influenced the result,   Why were they not 25 or more points up?  Because of f#ck-ups by the team that Meyer selected for the match and because of the n on-existent game plan.

Your simplistic approach is really  amazing - can it come from a thinking person?  .   

The truth hurts - stupid dunce?

@ Mike

Kriel has had ample opportunity.

Let us compare two players.

Jantjies and Kriel.

Aside from the last few months Jantjies has been at least twice as good as any other SA 10 in SR for two maybe even three seasons straight.

At no point has Kriel ever been close to the best in his position in SR. Not even for a couple of weeks running.

Jantjies has, I could be wrong, less than half the international caps that Kriel does.

Your opinion...

The moment Jantjies has a bad run of form, starting with his first poor performance, you're on him like shyts on a blanket. 

Kriel has never managed more than some really average performances where he actually didn't embarrass himself and somehow he makes it onto your list.

Indeed Jantjies has been overtaken of late, only by Pollard and only very recently yet you've completely written him off.

I'm being a bit unfair because I think Pollard is a better 10. Willemse probably is too. 

...But if your being realistic and actually looking at form to disregard Jantjjes then you have to look at Kriel in the same way.

He has never done anything in a Bok Jersey and he has had the more caps than any other Bok the last three years. I'm speaking totally from memory here so could be wrong. Can anyone name a more capped player since the WC season?

The question...when do we start seeing the dividends of all that trust placed him? 

We said the ref won the Landers the Bulls game. Go watch the full game again Mike. You'll find that Kriel lost the Bulls points scoring positions three times! And on not one of those occasions was genius required. He just had to do his job. 

He makes poor decisions, runs silly lines, throws terrible passes appears never to break the line.

Time to look elsewhere, place that same confidence in whoever gets the spot, and then force Kriel to win his position back...like Pollard is doing.

Plum

I have a serious problem in dealing with issues and the problem is I always base my comments on performance reality and my argument with Mozart about Kriel was not about the player alone - but the actual reason for the loss against Japan  in the 2015 WC.   The actual problem was with the team selection and the absent game plan of Meyer and not the last try scored by Japan for which Mozart always  blame for the loss of the game.    

Quick one Mike...

Has De Allende ever performed well at test level?

I remember a try against Ireland but that's about it.

At least Jantjies has dominated SR for an extended period. Something De Allende looked like he was gonna do about 3 or 4 years back, but it never materialised.

And again, lets remember that Jantjies played most of his games under Coetzee. A coach that all but Eben failed under.

Again, Pollard is probably better. So is Willemse. But if you wanna be truly objective then you cant so quickly fling Jantjies over the wall while touting others who have never at any stage done any better.

Nou hoe nou oom?

At this point i'll take Werner Kok and Kwagga Smit at 12-13. Both great defenders, both great game readers and most importantly exceptional line breakers who are hard to bring down, giving forward enough time to catch up to play.

That one is right from Beeno and i back it all the way.

Our back line should be...

9Faf, 10Pollard, 11Ismael, 12Kok, 13Kwagga, 14Le Roux/Combrink 15 Galant

Am, Nkosi, Esterhuizen, Dyanti, Skosan and Willemse are all players of color and wouldn't be out of place in the Bok camp either.

There's plenty a decent option Mike.

All of those are skillful guys. Both wingers and the full back are good high ball takers as well as kickers.

My only concern would be Galant's pace. He seems very slow. Maybe needs to drop 5kgs or so.

De Allende and Kriel wouldn't even make the bench.

Plum

De Allende did score more tries than one 9 matter off act 3) but his real value has always been his ability to break lines and beat defenders -which contribute to scoring of tries.

In 2015 De Allende trashed Nonu in the test in SA and caused him to be replaced early in the game.   He did the same this year to SBW in the Blues game.   However, who do you think will be a better outside center?  One cannot go with a loose forward - who has not played a single backline game since he left school and use him as a center on test level.

As to Jantjies - he has elements in his game which is affected by poor coaching and heaven helps anybody being coached by Coetzee or Meyer.   That combination spells one thing - inevitable disaster. 

However, there are elements in the play of Jantjies where coaching alone is not the problem.  Jantjies under pressure inevitably fails in things were he normally is good in.  He start to miss goal kicks conversion, his defense is very poor and his kicking game became problematic - while his pop passes are too many times intercepted.   I must admit I have never really been a Jan tjies fan - but to my mind he does not perform well enough to be played on test level..  .

Kriel should make the squad as he has had a pretty good season and this has been noted by various journalists etc. Am and Kriel are the two likely choices. Kriel of course s pretty quick and has grown as a player so its no use harkening back to a missed tackle.

One also notes that Wllemse beats numerous opponents all the time. Lets see a clip of what happened here.

I took your paragraph about Jantjies and made it about De Allende

However, there are elements in the play of De Allende where coaching alone is not the problem.  De Allende under pressure inevitably fails in things were he normally is good in.  He start to miss tackles, his passing is very poor and his ruining of games became problematic - while his pop passes are too many times intercepted.   I must admit I have never really been a De Allende fan - but to my mind he does not perform well enough to be played on test level...

There's your free edit for the day

SharkBok

Indeed. He should probably go back to 15. I recall him being much better there.

Dankie Heyneke. Dankie boet!

Allende has looked the best 12 n the country this year with Esterhuizen challenging

The Moztroscope is need of some serous maintenance. Think Pieter Steph Du Toit for one!!! Adjust the lense, clean it, recalibrate it, realign it etc.

This is keeping me from work.

Mozart

Still deluded - clear up your prejudice (Du Toit is not a threat to Matfield anymore)  and you may just see the real value of Du Toit in the games he plays in.    

Mozart

Still deluded - clear up your prejudice (Du Toit is not a threat to Matfield anymore)  and you may just see the real value of Du Toit in the games he plays in.    

Jantjies has no BMT. Give him go-forward and a loose, free-running game and he looks the part. Rattle him early though and he's useless for the rest of the game. Put him and his pack under pressure and he folds like a house of cards. We've seen it often enough. I can't recall one decisive performance from him against major opposition in test rugby. He's had ample chances and he is extremely experienced. What's going to change to suddenly turn him into a match winner at test level? He is not a test quality flyhalf. The end. Move on.

De Allende and Kriel has never been the answer, but we have so few options in midfield. They will come to nothing again in the coming test season if they turn out to be the chosen two. I just don't know who we can really expect to come to anything out of the options available.

Correct Pakie. I'm bias as fck when it comes to Jantjies...the hairstyle, the pose...it's not logical, I think it stems from him being a total flop. Regardles, he can't cope with a flat defence and starts running laterally when you cramps his space. I think he's actually gutsy for his size, but that's it. To me he's a one trick pony...and I'm not too sure about what the trick is.

Willemse is too green, but he is probably the superstar of the future. 

Not really a Pollard fan either. We will pick our team by scratching the kakkest players...not by picking the best. Bok by default. 

I think that performance on average is reflected by Foxsport.  According to their stats the flyhalfs gained the following average iro flyhalf performance in all games played:-

Willemse                    45,6

Du Preez                     36,1

Pollard                         35,9

Jantjies                         30,1

There is not much difference between Pollard and Du Preez, but Willemse is way ahead of those two.    Jantjies is a poor fourth statistic-wise. 

I think that is the kind op thing that Rassie will bear in mind when it comes to flyhalf selection - even though .some site members would not agree.   I think - since Willemse is not in the mix for the June tests - the choice will be between Pollard and Du Preez in those tests.

There is no way that  Willemse will not be in the RC squad and slowly phased in from the bench,.   

As a point of interest Beauden Barrett is also in the 35-36 range, 

Mozart

The last mozcroscope was such a load of garbage and so slanted - it had no bearing on the actual game described,  The slant was so evident to favour Morne and your other faourites for instance it was not worth reading.   A huge load of utter BS. . 

@Draad

Met a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy blah blah a while back and was told that apparently Jantjies is not only the hardest worker but also a very respectful player.

Indeed the hairstyle and body language don't portray that.

All I'm saying is, as good as the other 10s have looked this year in SR, Jantjies has looked twice as good in the three years prior. That's a long time, relatively speaking.

Of the contenders, Pollard is the only one who has shown/had the opportunity to show BMT...At the WC and in the victory over the ABs.

Presently the Boks should be able to build pack that could dominate for a good ten years. Possibly one of our best packs ever.

These names that keep coming up, many of them are 22 or younger. When last did that happen? Especially in the forwards.

EG Kitshoff, Louw, Marx...show me a better front row right now? I don't think there is one. And they're gonna get even better.

What's their average age?

If that's our starting front row in June OMG England are gonna struggle.

What in five or six years from now when they're in their prime. 

The smart money would be on them picking a young 10 or two now and hopefully he/they grow/s with them. 

The same applies for 9. Faf is 28 already.

From that perspective Pollard, Willemse and Dups are the right age to be a part of a resurgent bok team. There's also a measure of unknown quantity about them. Less so for Pollard but he's still young too. 

We've see all we'll see from Jantjies unfortunately.

So i'm not disagreeing with yas.

I think they'll wanna make Marx skipper sooner rather than later and guys like Kitshoff, Dan&JL, Wilco, Eben, Lomp, PSDT and a few others are gonna form the core of the side. 

Only a few of the above are the wrong side of 25. 

That should be an exciting prospect for a double term coach. 

Here's hoping Rassie gets six years.

Oh, yeah, I just remembered..."transformation".

Scrap that rant.

Jesse Kriel went to my old school, which produced Joel Stransky, Butch James, Keith Oxlee, Peter Grant, Andy Van Der Watt and a few others in cricket like Kevin Petersen, Jackie Mc Glew and Phillip Nel (rugby 1937) and etc.and so I'm proud...and then guys like Alan Paton and Sir Quentin Smythe.

But I'm a critic...he's a talented player but lacks permanence and consistency but he has it and my honest opinion that he would be different in a stable rugby enviroment. We chop and change players because our coaches don't have vision...NZ coaches do...ouch!

Jesse is a good rugby player. He just isn't a 13. He has little feel for the position, especially defensively where he is too tentative especially with the weight of his own tryline pressing at his back, a few examples of which has already been mentioned higher up.

Agreed Plum. That's why I whole heartedly confess my bias. It's illogical I know.

PS, I meant he was a total flop at WP, not in general. 

Am I the only one excited by the potential pack we can build?

Our pack is world class, our backs quite the opposite unfortunately.