Lions Series next year

Hope you're all looking after yourselves and your families in these unprecedented times - it's scary to see how quickly the daily lives we all know has changed, hopefully there'll be happier days ahead soon. Nice to see that even throughout this, we can always be certain about death, taxes and Mike and Moz disagreeing over Fransie Steyn, haha.

Something to take you minds of current events, let's have a go at predicting the Boks XV for the 1st test next year against the Lions, I'll set a reminder on my phone and we'll see who gets closest when it's announced.

I reckon:

1. Kitshoff
2. Marx
3. Trevor
4. Etzbeth
5. Mostert
6. Siya
7. PSDT
8. Duane
9. Faf
10. Pollard
11. MM
12. DDA
13. Am
14. Kolbe
15. Fassi

And the bench just for a laugh:

16. Dweba
17. Ox
18. Malherbe
19. RG
20. Lood
21. Coetzee
22. H Jantjies
23. Frans

Not necessarily my first choice but I think it's what Nienaber will go with.

Let's have yours.

APD

Starting XV:

1. Kitshoff
2. Marx 
3. Malherbe
4. Etzebeth (c) 
5. RG
6. Kwagga
7. Mostert
8. Vermeulen
9. De Klerk
10. Pollard
11. Mapimpi
12. Esterhuizen
13. Am
14. Kolbe
15. Bosch

Squad Omissions: Kolisi, De Allende, Herschelle, Lood. If considered a 7 only, du Toit (he is a bench lock). 

AO - our own expert in rugby disinformation at it again.   He is and remains totally rugby-ignorant,

The team will depend on the form of players next year and there may be some minor changes to the team posted by APD.  The fact is I will not comment on the AO distortion,

1. Kitshoff
2. Marx
3. Malherbe
4. Etzebeth
5. De Jager
6. Siya
7. PSDT
8. Du Preez
9. Faf
10. Pollard
11. MM
12. DDA
13. Am
14. Kolbe
15. Willemse

16. Mbonambi
17. Ox/Schoeman
18. Nyakane?
19. RG
20. Schickerling
21. Coetzee
22. H Jantjies
23. J Kriel/Bosch

Dave

I wonder whether the process to select 6 forwards and two backs for the bench started by Erasmus will continue.in future?     

Dave 

I also had doubts about it when Erasmus did that in the WC, but as you said it worked for him. The one seriously injured backline player (Kriel) they replaced promptly,  The problem is that such a system requires players that can play virtually everywhere in the backline to be available and that is not always possible,  It could lead to better players in specific positions and  unable to play in a variety of positions missing  out on selection.       

That’s because Dud is a lock.

Mozart

Why for a change do you not make some reasonable comments like other members do and f orget about your petty hate campaigns? 

I don't always unnderstand how Mozart reacts to things,  Danie Rossouw was a lock who regularly played at 8 and Mozart had no problem with that.  Rossouw was a good player but nowhere in the class of Du Toit,  Rossouw was not even a consideration as player of the year ever.  

4 runs for 2 metres/2 passes .....against England.

3 runs for 5 metres/zero passes....against Wales

6 runs for 5 metres/ 1 pass  against Japan.

On average Dud ran 4 times a game for an average gain of less than one metre......and on average made 1 pass a game.

But  it’s worse .....in those 13 runs.....he turned the ball over twice.

So Dud’s attacking contribution was a negative. A turnover is worth a 25 metre kick into touch, you can always cede a turnover and gain that kind of ground. Two turnovers are worth 50 metres.

That means Dud gained a whopping 12 metres and conceded 50 metres. Thirteen runs for a negative 38 metres. Normally we would have expected a positive 30 metres from 13 runs.

That means Dud cost us almost 70 metres as a runner. It’s amazing we won the WC with that kind of assigned ball carrier.

Mozart 

If I ever saw  a load of BS then I will always know it must come from you.   There is no way that anybody can come  up with that as a logical explanation at all - it is just a bigger load of BS than normal.  You estimated nothing at all - plain and total imagination without any fact,  It is totally a load of unsubstantiated jargon stemming from a prejudiced mind,

Now where is you proposed team for the Lions tests next year ?      

Mozart

So you like the player - no distance conceded - you have never tried that stunt before,  You don't like the player so you invent a norm for that and say 25 meters,  This is indeed junk - a new invention fabricated by you,   

But 8 experts from different countries evaluated the performances of the players under consideration,  There were 5 nominees made by the various countries and in the end they reviewed each candidate, they have advanced data we never sew about each player and literally puts each player under the microscope and come up with the selection of the Player of the Year. 

What did you do?  You said Mostert - a player who ended up on the bench because he was not up to standard - should  have been nominated.  You then invented a new fornula to discredit Du Toit,  That really is the top level of player hatred I have ever seen,  I even know when it started, It started in 2014 - when that most incompetent of coaches Meyer  brought Matfield back to play for SA and   Dave and I wrote it was stupid to do that and he should have used Du Toit rather than Matfield,  You went into hysteria and that hysteria  is still relevant 5 years later,

 After all that - where is your team to play the Lions next year?          .  

Oh nonsense....Savea breaks tackles. He’s very hard to put away....Dud isn’t. The Boks’ strategy up north worked with forward dominance....they sucked in the opposing loosies. The Lions won’t be dominated up front, they will present more of an open field challenge....which will expose some of our strategy, including the playing of a lock on the flank.

As a carrier, in every test season, even under Coetzee (when Bok attack figures were considerably higher than under Rassie), Steph has always been a very low impact carrier. I have covered this in considerable detail. At no level of the game is Steph an impactful carrier, there doesn't exist one season at any level of the game where this is so. Now, compare this to Dan du Preez, who bursts through defenders, busting open the defence, with explosive power. That highlights a key point: Steph is not an explosive athlete. He has that old school heavy Bok power, where weight in contact is the key attribute. This is similar to Lood, though he is even more languid and with probably the worst endurance I have seen in any Bok lock. Maybe any lock. Steph doesn't possess good hands, and his passing stats are very low. So too Damian's. What does this mean? When you put the ball in their hands, it doesn't circulate around the team. So what does that mean? We go through multiple phases of static rugby until we have an open highway for a runner with a simple pass, or a silky runner can weave through defenders in tight and heavily congested space. Rassie's Boks are heavily scripted, just like his Stompies teams. It's about controlling exactly where each player is, who he is with, in which units, and how the team moves the ball around the field from phase to phase with heavily pre-arranged sequences of plays with very specific personnel groupings. It's not about giving players opportunities to utilise their abilities. This is quite an interesting thing, because Rassie literally reversed everything that Coetzee did. This leads me to believe that he doesn't trust his players. Not defensively; not on attack either. 

But back to Steph. I love to compare Steph and Schalk's 2015 season at 7. The difference in production was astounding. Schalk comprehensively outplayed any season of Steph's at any level of the game. One is the best player in the world (ranking 17 in Super rugby of all flanks, and 29th of all top 30 SA carriers with very poor metres per run); the other was a clog in the distribution chain (despite the fact that he generated play with over 60% passing and offloads of all his possession, to the 20+% of Steph's languid sweet nothings). This highlights the ignorance, bias, and poor analytics of South Africans. South Africa is amongst the worst cultures on earth for analytics and critical thinking. Problem-solving and work ethic too. It just isn't there either. Far too emotional and that overrides logic. Even Graham Henry and Fred Flinstone commented on this in 2011. They said they analysed our rugby, and found that the only thing they could take away from it was emotion and passion. That was their missing ingredient. They said their strengths were in analysis, strategy and tactics; the nuts and bolts of the operation. What an unflattering assessment of our countrymen. Many were proud of what they had to say, gleaming over their passion etc, but failed to consider the other attributes that weren't present. The plastics, ever-growing in number will always champion the mediocre with the biggest smile and the most emotional bluster. Look who they promoted most over the years. You'll see a trend. Steph is no world-class player in any position. I couldn't help but laugh at the plastics when Steph met his match as a key ball carrier against Japan in 2015. That after Mark Andrews and the media machine stated that Meyer "had to" build the entire game around Steph and make him the focal point of the campaign. First hurdle and flop. Flop as in all his blunt carries. Ende. 

Is this not enough madness from two people who rates any player they dislike differently from what they mediocre performances and then come up with total distortions in their evaluation,   They have lied and lied and liked about certain players for years now and pretended that they are the only people in the world  who knows how to rate players,  

Dave 

I looked at the stats of Burger in the 2015 WV amd in total the situation up to the semi was as follows:-

Burger

2/0

0

1/72/88

193

1

7

8

11

68/7

1/0

8

0/0

The problem that the idiotic AO fails to realize was the crazy game plan  Meyer in that series, One has to look where the ball went from all phases of play.   

So lets analyze that abortion of the Meyer game plan carefully up to and including the semi against the All Blacks:-

Scrumhalf

Total ball handling         -       617 times

Balls passed                   -       541 times 

Balls kicked or carried             76 times

Flyhalf

Balls from kicked balls  -         75 times

Balls from scrummy      -       150 times

Burger

Balls from scrummie     -        161 times 

Balls passed                   -          72 times

Balls carried                  -           88 times 

Balls kicked                   -             1 time

Of the 541 times the scrummies passed the balls 311 went to either the flyhalf or Burger,   Where the rest went I did not analyze,   What I did observe is tfat the balls did not reach the outside backs and that most of it died with the flyhalf  or Burger,  Whereas Burger passed the ball and to whom is debatable,    In any event the fact is that in seven games the inside center  only handled the ball 79 times and that is where the games for players outside of the no 12 died.  

Bearing in mind the game plan Burger's stats look rather average to me - especially looking at the game plan and bearing in mind that in the series he lost ball possession 11 times  and was penalized  8 times.  He was jokingly  called the stand-in flyhalf by me - but the fgures indicate that there is quite some grounds for it,           

I already established that Willie and Pollard had more than twice the production under Meyer, that Schalk was far more productive, that the team had over 1000m more under Meyer, better-attacking stats. Only a very foolish individual would persist in criticizing Meyer on this site after all the info I have posted. In short, none of his critics on this site have a leg to stand on. Every word consistent with every form of evidence and ultimately present in the film reviews. 

"So lets analyze that abortion of the Meyer game plan"

No, no you didn't analyze any game plan. I've never seen you ever analyze a game plan. In fact, I have only seen two other members analyze a game plan. Never a Meyer critic. So, let's see a real breakdown Lügnerin, let's see some patterns, plays, let's see a tactical breakdown of how his team's used the ball. You can refer to some of my past material for help, because you won't know where to begin! 

Org and Moz best throw in the towel. Du Toit was voted the world's player for 2019 playing 7 . END OF Story.

Allende is the best we had for 2019 and was widely praised. 

END OF STORY. 

AO

How could Pollard have that better performance record?   Meyer treated Pollard like dirt, he was no constant selection by him,   In 2014 he played in three tests against Scotland in June and against Argentina in the RC.  He then used Morne causing he fiasco in Perth.  After the only AB test won while Meyer was coach - he used Pollard in the Irish test and for the next three year-end games  he put him on the bench,

He then used him in the 3 RC tests  all lost by SA  where performances were not all that hot, And in the first WC match against Japan it as back to Lambie,  In the WC Pollard had zero chance of performing bearing in mind the  game plan of Meyer, 

By the way I told you that the stats you use are worthless  and when looking at the passing stats above one can clearly see that the whole absence of a  game plan obliterated anything of value attached to  the passing and carrying of balls.

Erasmus is too clever to come up with that junk and call it a game plan.    

For Dud Toit it’s all about visibility. Remember when Schalk cut his hair, he suddenly seemed half the player. He wasn’t. But the many invisible things he did were suddenly....invisible.

Du Toit like all us blond chaps is very visible. Added to which the camera men have bought the hype. So one gets a constant flow of Dud doing various things.

Which is why we have to back up our senses by looking at the numbers. And the numbers for the WC knockouts say Dud literally cost the team 70 metres in the knockouts over what we could have very reasonably expected. 

It’s not a debate.....the numbers are crystal clear.

Augie your analysis of emotional thought versus rational thought is very insightful. Denying numbers....saying ESPN got it wrong but they got it right.

Physically we are the most talented rugby nation in the world. Mentally we are somewhere between Italy and Bargentina.

Duplica tion

Dave

I saw him missing the tackle you refer to,  ESPN is not full proof - but give a very good idea about what happened in a series of matches as to performance of players,   However it is also been   abused by scoundrels who use selected stats and often enough cook things out of stats which is not even there. 

As to Mostert there was dropped from the starting line-up in the WC after the AB Match,  He was outplayed and outjumped in the RC test against the AB'st - was never use as a juniper against the subsequent Argentina a missed a tackle leading to a try and in the AB's  WC match did the same.  The distorters on site blamed Du Toit for the two vey poor tackle attempts.   I think that was when Erasmus decided the Springboks were going nowhere with him and moved De Jager into the starting lune-up.       

Take the following - we have been flooded by stats from 2015 RC and WC  compared to the 2019 RC and WC  and claiming that the 2015 Springboks was better performers than the Springboks in 2019,    There are three things that make utter nonsense  of the stats usage in this case.  There were indeed  a huge number of passes and carries in 2015 but there were three  problems in practical terms  and those were -

*   the total absence of any real game plan that would lead to proper usage of the balls resulting in the same usage repeatedly without any objectives in mind;

*   inadequate optimizing of the ball possession in scoring of sufficient tries in 2015: and

*   the chronic inability to win matches and losses against Argentina at home and the real shocker - the loss against Japan.     

The fact that he keep repeating the nonsense on site tells everybody a lot about the total ignorance of the guy when it comes to rugby as a game,   

Mozart 

For you to say  -

"Physically we are the most talented rugby nation in the world. Mentally we are somewhere between Italy and Bargentina".

is rich and again show your total ignorance when it comes to rugby as a game  You produce your own foolishness pretending that it is proper stats,

That being said - your total support of Meyer as a coach and your attacks  on Erasmus  teach us a lot about your total inability to think logically about rugby issues.  The absence of coaching ability in both Meyer and Coetzee damaged the Springboks massively.    

Mentally the Springboks beat the  English comprehensively and that was entirely possible with  the top coach in world rugby.  

AO 

You cannot break down a plan of a coach if there is no plan in evidence,   I do not take much from your so-called Meyer game plan.    It is beautifully written but there is unfortunately no eviden ce that anything you wrote was ever implemented,    

Hilarious....the original ball in hand rugby  fanatic, who was against any tactical kicking......suddenly claims he was in line with Bok strategy at the WC.

Here’s the thing Wanker....we played exactly the rugby I have been advocating for the last 8years. You couldn’t stop criticizing that....and now you have the gall to claim you were the enlightened one.

I’m very willing to dig up all the old posts if you like.