Lesson's Learnt from Donkey Potgieter

If one Donkey can change, perhaps they all can....
Potgieter has been a revelation and one of the Warratahs better players. Apparently the Bulls wanted him back but he declined to stay at the Warratahs where he can become a better player. If he went back to the Bulls would he be coached to again be a donkey?Are our coaches the real donkeys?

The players with natural ability like Willie Le Roux can be creative, has expert angles of running and have great passing skills, but too many of our players do not seem to be able to set players up and keep the ball alive until an gap opens up. 
It just seems that coaches here teach the set piece and defense, then kick away and chase. 
We have too many players seeking the collision and we wonder why our players are injured so often.
We are never going to get to number one until our players can become better as a cohesive unit as play makers and creators, and not just an over emphasize on bashers.

 Agree Shark; the once known as Donkey is now a force to be reckoned with, man this guy has had a great season.  
SA rugby is yet to evolve in order to consistently  compete at the highest level.  We do have the players for any type of game plan, only if the coaches can see the light.  

He is quoted in another article as saying the coach teaches them more than just smashing everyone in front of them but instead teaches how to hit the holes. 
Some of us have been saying this about SA rugby for a while now.

 Sharlbok
Thee is a major problem in SA Rugby.  The problem is that we make all the wrong selections for the wrong reasons.  
The coaches look at the size of the players and forget that the players must have skills and ball sense to be really successful.   The skills can be drilled into players - the ball sense is something entirely different.  Most players with ball sense - like for instance Willie le Roux - is virtually borne with it - it is not a thing that can really be easily taught to people.  
Take for instance some of our backline players - where braun is all that counts and then ask the question -  are they really successful?   Mozart constantly harps on about Francois Steyn and his physique - he never realizes that the man is not a natural ball player.  He is clueless when to kick and when not to - when to pass and to whom to pass.  This makes for a bad usage of the backlines he plays in.   You can look at a player like JJ too - wonderful physique, but no rugby intelligence.   
Besides that the passing and handling skills of our players are sub-par - way too many ill-timed passes and way too many ball handling errors,  be it inaccurate passes or plain and simple knock-ons.
In this article and a previous statement of Jacques Potgieter he mentioned what a wonderful impact  the Waratahs coaching staff had on him.   He became the exact opposite of the brainless and inadequate play of Wilem Alberts - wh cannot pass a ball to save his life and as to catching one - it is 80-10 that he would knock it on.  He does no ball protection and recovery in breakdown situations.   Yet some members of this site rave about him as a loosie - Potgiter after his Waratahs experience is ten times the player Alberts was and ever will be.
As long as our caqoches only play players depending on their physique and keep on coachiig players to play "donkey" rugby - so long will we be second or lower in world rugby ratings.
We should get a coach like Cheika and within six months the team would look entirely different and be a better playing unit than any SA coach can ever achieve.   The donkeys will be gone and we will have the necessary players in abundance that would perform better than the donkeys ever could.           

Donkey Potgieter....Frans  Steyn.... Willem Alberts. What's the link? Why the link is the Oom. I know Potgieter as a Bok lock is his latest nutty scheme, so I thought he might keep this about Donkey. But gloriously he has found yet another way to weave in Alberts and Leathermans' m0m Frans. The Oom has a hide which would make an elephant's skin look like rice paper.

 Mozart
The question here is clear for all to see - at least those who want to see.   The question is how do you get players to perform when there are serious deficiencies in their performances. 
Potgieter turned from a very routine Bulls player - playing at 7 - into a very good player when he went to the  Waratahs and the question is why is he a better player than he used to be.  He played for the Waratahs at lock and loosie so why the improvement and what is wrong with the system in South Africa which cannot improve a player from being a "donkey" into a top player?
The one issue is the obsession we have about the physique of players even in the face of serious player deficiencies.  Three players were named as examples - namely Francois Steyn, JJ Engelbrecht and Willem Alberts.   All three are riding on the back of physicality and all three are not players with even the basic abilities required in their positions.  
If you do not believe that those three are deficient - then go and look at the games they played in over the past 6 months - and taking into account their statistics - come back and tell me that I am wrong.    The three players mentioned as as much ball sense in them as one braincell would have - absolutely zero.  
It sis not my "thick skin" that counts it is their deficient performances that no coaches in the world can correct - because they are uncoachable  "donkeys", whereas Potgieter was in fact coachable.        

You don't say, Oom, you don't say? But sadly you do say, on and on ad nauseum.  

Mozart
Vt rhw way if any of those three played rugby in other top rugby countries in tke world - they would never be considered to play for the national team.   They would  like Morne Steyn  be lucky if they could warm the bench for their club sides.

I think Cheika is kind of overrated and if anything it's more the Waratah's copying Potgieter and manning up in the collisions than him becoming a different kind of player. He highlights something that's really been wrong with Aussie rugby for ages, a lack of penetration. Give them a player who can get you going forward and the Aussies get more of the space that they desperately need. They have alot of movement but so little strength carrying forward.

So all in all, the idea that Potgieter has become a better player is a lie. The players around him make him more effective. It's like when Tim Lane joined the Bulls in 2007, he added more movement around those big hitters and carriers and it made them more effective. The defensive line couldn't bunch up and swarm those big carriers anymore because they had to make more decisions and watch everyone around the carrier. So what can we all learn from this? It's more what you do with a player than whether he is a major talent. Look at Jantjies at the Stormers, not nearly as effective as he was at the Lions! Why? Very poor backline structures. This praise from Potgieter is nothing more than a pr stunt to please his boss and solidify his place in the team. He is seen as essential, whereas he is just another strong carrier in a land filled wityh an endless supply of big carriers. It's oh so obvious.

 Gonzo, welcome to the board. However there is little doubt Potgieter is a better player as has been noted by many. One needs talent plus good coaching to be  top player. 
Oz are on the rise. Could win the RC this year. Defini te contenders

Thankyou Beeno. I don't rate Australia's chances that highly. It will all depend on how South Africa and New Zealand perform. There is a chance to knock the All Blacks down and South Africa is still developing and fine tuning their game, but both look so much more potent than Australia. We've been saying for seven or eight years that Australia are on the rise but it just hasn't happened at all. Last year Ewan's favourites were totally humiliated. Where is the change going to come from? They are no better at the breakdown or set pieces and still have the same ammunition in the backs. Super rugby is giving them false hope in my opinion and is no longer the standard in provincial rugby - it's getting worse and worse every year!

 Welsome Gonzo
You may not rate Portgioeter's claim that he has learnt smething in oxxie rugby - which he never learnt fronm any SA coach - but I wtih respect have to differ from you.  What he has learnt is not donkey rugby - charging straight at the forst defender and going down without an attempted off-loads or passing - but -
 *  development of his ball handling skills, *   ball protection at brealdown situations; *  breakdown ball revoery; and  *  improved running lines.
None of the above have really to do with purely physical performance - but represents better utilization of physicality and much better usage of physical abilities.   He perhaps have an advantage in that he took his physicality attained in SA wit him to his new environment and what he learnt in both places makes him a much better player.
Potgieter himself said that he ws coached things never dealt with by SA coaches abd I am afraid I believe him n that regard.  He more than anybody else would knopw what he got coached on here by the Bulls and what is happening in the Waratahs set up.  

 Thankyou CleverMike, I don't think our players lack ball skills. Some of the best tries being scored are from our players. The problem is setting in place support structures and attacking schemes that make use of that style of play. In my opinion it all comes back down to coaching. Take Schalk for instance, he was a true-blue basher from 2003 until 2007 when Eddie Jones told him to look for the offload. It completely transformed his game. Look what Campese and Lane did to the Sharks and Bulls in 2007. Look then what the Cheetahs Haw ies Fourie has done there (forwards are used like All Blacks forwards!). These people have made very big improvements in very little time. Why? Because they are already capable of it! When it comes to fumbles and handling errors, the vast majority of that is hesitancy from not having a plan to attack. If individuals do not have a coherent collective plan to break down the defensive line then the net result is slower crabbing runs, muddled lines and miss-timed passes, dropped balls. I think we need to look at the cause not the symptom. In Potgieter's case, he is playing for a side whose missing link was mongrel in the pack. He gave them that abrasive quality to balance out their attacking intent. Going forward and unleashing the outside backs is they key and the fullness of a well organized team. Potgieter is doing the dirty work, saying much more is overstating his  contributions. I'm not knocking the guy, but it just seems to me that everyone is trying to use him to make a point about something that just doesn't exist.