Mozart's Clangers

Let me remind you of two statements made by Mozart over the last two months alone. Those are - * that Springbok bench players need not be international level players and that players of lesser calibre could be on he bench in internationals; and * that loose forwards do not have any role to play in line-outs and that line-out performance is not a critrium for selection of loosies. SPRINGBO BENCH PLAYERS This clanger came about so as to justify the selection of Juan de Jongh for the Springbok bench. His exact words were that De Jongh Is not an international calibre player - but he is good enough for the bench. So lets look at real performances of De Jongh over the past year and see what transpires and on what Mozart base his argument:- * In the test against he Aussies in Pretoria De Jongh came off the bench and immediately buggered up an excellent try scoring opportunity of the Springboks. * during the EOYT - De Jongh played at 13 in two tests - in the Murrayfield test he was virtually invisible during the game - in the Twickenham test he went AWOL as is evident by the following stats from ESPN:- De Jongh 0/0 0 0/1/0 0 0 0 0 0 3/0 0/0 * During the Super 15 this year De Jong played in 11 of the 16 matches of the Stormers. In those 11 games he achieved the following point allocation from Test Rugby and Foxsport Test Rugby - Average points per game - 138 Foxsport - Average points per game - 12 Lets take into account that an international level player should at least be 180 points in Test Rugby and 20 points in Foxsport and it clearly indicates that he is useless and not even competent to play on Super 25 level - leave alone test level. De Allende with half the game time of De Jongh managed an average of 20 points per game on Foxsport - nearly double that of De Jongh. Lesson - do not play around with words if you want to justify the selection of poor players to the Springbok squad. LOOSIES IN LINE OUT PLAY This one came about because Alberts plays virtually no role in line-out play (in 15 games since August last year Alberts took 12 line-out balls in total) and Labuschagne does - the latter in the games 15 games he played in on Super 15 level took 39 line-out balls). According to him the trend to use loosies like Read to help with recovery of line-out balls is of no importance and should be disregarded when loosies are selected to play on international level. Obviously another major CLANGER - so lets bear that one in mind when he comments on performance of players in future.

Oom back to the half truths? What I said is the Bok team is made up of a core of regular players....on the bench you tend to find some players who rotate in and out of internationals without ever becoming part of the core, and new core players, who briefly play off the bench before becoming full team members. Kindly stop lying or reproduce the post where you claim I said that. - As for loosie lineout play, I have already debunked that. - De Jongh has had a disappointing S15 so far. Many players have good periods and then tend to fall off....that's happening to de Jongh. He seems to need more space than he is getting or can engineer for himself. I have no problem in saying his form is poor. So what's your problem. That I liked him in the past? So the model in your mind is, if you ever liked a player, and his form drops, you can't judge performance? - OOm34 you will find most test candidates fail, and I am much more demanding than most....so I accept that standard willingly. But a more sensible approach is just to be honest about performance. That gets you into less trouble. Like the trouble you got yourself into, claiming Alberts failed....when everybody else saw him making a huge difference to our loosie play. Just be honest OOm, cut the lies.

Mozart Liar, liar - your pants are on fire. You said that bench players can come and go = and what you left us now - is that you implied as well that bench players do not need to be test level players. In that regard you said that even though De Jongh is not a test level player - he is good enough to be on the bench. If that applies to De Jongh then it is logical that it also applies to other players. As to loosie play -you have debunked NOTHING. You referred to Spies and his ability to take line out balls and then said whether I said that he should rather been in the team because of that. That is a deliberate attempt to side-track the issue - but clearly a failure. - which I have already dealt with elsewhere. The truth remains - you said loosies has no role to play in line outs without realising what a clanger you made. Alberts played in four games this year. He failed miserably in the first two Super 15 games - then had n average game against the Samoans and failed in the subsequent Super 15 game yesterday. Let me give you the stats for those four games in order of play and you tell me where he as so successful - bearing in mind that the Samoan is probably weaker than any of the top 8 Super 15 teams:- Alberts 0/0 0 0/3/7 6 0 1 0 0 14/5 0/0 Alberts 0/0 0 1/3/4 4 0 0 0 1 4/1 Alberts 0/0 0 1/3/6 11 0 0 0 1 16/2 0/0 The stats on yesterdays game was not posted as yet on ESPN Scrum. The fosport stats are out and so is the Test Rugby squad on the game yesterday:- Test Rugby - 100 points abject failure Foxsport - 15 points : very, very poor Incidentally Labuschagne points yesterday was - Test Rugby - 280 points Foxsport - 41 points Now do not come and tell me that a continuously failing Super 15 player is suitable to play on international level. CLANGER MOZART - CLANGER MOZART - CLANGER MOZART

Flippin' funny Freddie!!!