MOMozart
Captain49,914 posts
MOMozartCaptain49,914 posts
11 Jun 2013, 03:31#1
Yes it's true, even though it's close. Winning percentages are influenced by opposition. For example a coach who has a high percentage of RWC games will have a high winning record, because of the patsy pool games. The only way to construct a reliable comparable statistic is to make things as equal as possible....ie keep the opposition the same.
That's best done by measuring our coaches in the TN, where the opponents are the same and consistently of a high calibre. So if we take the TN records of the three coaches who have had full terms, or close to full terms we find:
Jake at 9 wins out 20 leads at 45%.
PdV with 9 wins out of 22, is next at 41%
And Mallett with 6 wins out of 15 is last at 40%.
That's a very different picture from what is always mentioned. And the fact is White was virtually handcuffed in the 2006 TN....his record was depressed by the politics.
Crucially though White had the smarts to engineer a RWC win, while Mallett was hypnotized by the drop.
CLclevermike
Coach57,555 posts
CLclevermikeCoach57,555 posts
11 Jun 2013, 09:38#3
Spooony
Just a question - when did Mallett win 18 games in a row as coach? The real stats is that h won 15 games in a row - not 18. And he did that with a team put together over 4 months by Du Plessis. Du Plessis was trying to get the Springboks into a winning mode and his last twoi games as coach was huge - beating both Australia and the Lions by record magins - which still stands today after 16 years.
That inherited team was the one that went n to win another 15 games under Mallett. Disaster struck when Mallett decided to fire Teichmann as captain and had to start replacing players. He was clueless and from then onwards the team deteriorated badly to the point where he resigned before he was effectively fired.
Mallett was a coach that had disastrous player communication and great media support - his main support base was the Sunday Times - where the coke sniffer was rugby writer. After Meyer became coach Keohane became his PRO - being rewarded financially for his support. Keohane did not survive the fall of Mozart by long.
MOMozart
Captain49,914 posts
MOMozartCaptain49,914 posts
11 Jun 2013, 16:04#4
You can can try and make a case off specifics every time. But that can be countered. For example NZ in 98/99 were at a weak level. And Oz were rebuilding in 98......hell we smashed them by 40 points with the team Mallett was about to inherit. So Mallett's TN record was against opposition that probably wasn't as good as Jake or PDV faced.....until 2000, and then Mallett won once in five games.
Nope the TN record of these coaches is one very good yardstick.....and in that Mallett was no great shakes.
MOMozart
Captain49,914 posts
MOMozartCaptain49,914 posts
12 Jun 2013, 15:37#12
The picture is not altered by the fact that Mallett is at 46.6% versus White at 45%. The perception has always been that Mallett has a significantly better winning record, which is clearly not the case. Then when you factor in his very poor record against top teams in 99 and 2000, you are presented with of a coach who lost the plot and was unable to find it again. The spin has always been that Mallett was fired because of a ticket controversy. Long before that his record made him vulnerable
CLclevermike
Coach57,555 posts
CLclevermikeCoach57,555 posts
13 Jun 2013, 00:27#14
Spooony
Sorry - but I differ from you in the case of the number of wins prior to the Twickenham test - where the Springboks lost. The total of number of wins was 17 in a row - still a record shared with the All Blacks - but they came close to breaking that record, but for their draw in the Brisbane test against the Aussies.
Of the 17 tests - Du Plessis was coach in the first two - namely against the Lions and Wallabies - both played in Pretoria. The other 15 test wins were while Mallett was coach.
MOMozart
Captain49,914 posts
MOMozartCaptain49,914 posts
13 Jun 2013, 01:54#15
This site will help keeping things straight:http://www.genslin.us/bokke/.
The fact is we had a streak of 17 test wins, with the first a 61 to 22 drubbing of Oz, under du Plessis. That side included most of the stalwart Boks who played in RWC99.
So Mallett started with a string of 16 wins and one loss in the 97 YE tour and the 98 season. Some of those were quite precarious. I was at the Welsh match played at Wembley because Cardiff Arms Park was being rebuilt. But for the timely intervention of a streaker who halted play for a few minutes Wales might have won that match.The streak saved the streak!
But we played solid rugby through 98 with a large dose of crash ball from Honibal and Muller.. an incredible come from behind win against NZ ...and the genius of Bobby Skinstad who secured the TN against Oz, bamboozling Tim Horan in the process.
Along comes 99 and NZ has improved their team....Oz is also one year more experienced. We have a very poor TN, followed by an exit to Oz in the RWC. The Boks are jeered at Twickenham as de Beer lines up several drops. Oz expect this and rush him....he makes one drop, but misses several others yielding good attacking platform There is no plan B.
In fact there is no plan B for the whole of 99 and 2000. We play 25 tests in those two years and win 14. But we were advantaged by 2 games against Italy, and matches against Spain, Uruguay, Canada, Scotland and Argentina. You have to eliminate those to get to our peer opposition. If you do that our wins plummet to 7 wins in 18 matches.
The truth is Mallet was only the streak....eliminate that and you have a coach who won 7 times in 19 matches (adding the streak breaking Pom match).
It's hard to know what to make of such a contradictory record. Was Mallett the coach of the streak.....or was he the bumbling coach who could never find his feet again. His subsequent poor record with Italy favours the one trick pony view. And his dealings with the Sharks and lack of involvement at the Stormers suggests a man will little aptitude or appetite for competition.
He also offered very little tactically. The view that he was an expansive coach because he dumps on Meyer is not well founded. We hardly ever passed the ball beyond Muller in 98....he and Honibal crashed it up. And if de Beer was playing, he kicked it. Nor were there other inventions like Jake's rush defence. It was meat and potatoes......and almost zero ability to improvise. In our loss to the Poms in 98, we couldn't change a failing game plan, because there were no alternative tactics.
This guy was given an outstanding Bok team when he started, but he left behind a team in tatters. The failures of Viljoen and Straeuli had a lot to do with the poor condition of the Bok talent pool, allowed to deteriorate alarmingly under Mallett.
That's my view, you are of course welcome to your own.
