Number 12....now the toughest position in rugby

It used to be tighthead, and nobody should underestimate the super human requirements of all that physical pressure. But 12 would get my vote these days, because of the physical battering of defending and running in that channel. At 13 there is a bit of space and it's back on back, mostly.  At 10 there is help to be had from the loosies....and smaller 10s seem to have long test careers.

But 12 is a path to the charnel house. The long term test occupants of this position, like Nonu, Jean and Jamie Roberts are tough men, who can mix it up with big loose forwards. If you watch a standard backline movement.....10 has space to run....by the time 12 has the ball,  the two backlines have swept together. Twelve is the tip of the spear....the point of collision.

So what does that tell us about the profile of a likely test 12. Firstly that he is likely to be either big or freakishly strong. Secondly,  that the way he deals with the inevitable tackle is key. Here we  have 3 different success models in our 3 examples. Roberts tends to step inside and try to slip the tackle....inevitably that leads to a loosie pounding. Nonu with his blocky power tries to beat off the tackle and Jean has a succesful way of long stepping his way across the advantage line. We could add SBW with his stand and offload tactic.

But they all have a means of breaching the line. Enter Fransie and I suppose he is most like Nonu in his approach....but I don't see the explosiveness. In short , other than bashing ahead I can't see what Fransie's model is....how he plans to get an advantage.

And these are early days.....you have to do what you do, match in, match out against other big men. Jean has done this since 05, and while he clearly paces himself a bit at this stage, come the tests he will be fully committed.  It's a tough old road.

i like this thread mozter, :o)

for the modern age game, a player who can handle the physical rigours of 12 is a huge asset, like u said, even england subscribe to that theory with manusamoa tulagi and twelvetrees mkaing more than casual appearnces for engs 12 jersey.

i also think thats why JDV is being watsed at the stormers at 13, ive found allnede to be much a do about nothing so far and dont know why JDV takes up the 12 where he can meet the physical demands and move habana to 13 where the more times he gets the ball, the better it is for the stormers, but TBH, any attacking plan is better then the stormers plan which revolves around playing the uglies rugby in the world.

my hurricanes are no better playing tim bateman at 12, he has been an epic failure so far whcih is a far cry from his performance last year where he was the undisputed 12 for the canes.

i wonder how folau would handle 12, might be worth a shot considering how useless he is at fullback.

Yep tightheads still command the highest salaries but my guess is that 12 will be quick to catch up.

The model 12 without peer was SBW. His strength was creating something from nothing. When a 12 is confronted with traffic as they are, they have nothing to work with. SBW was able to commit physically, free his arms and offload in contact, setting up forward momentum for his support runners. As important as it was for SBW to execute this skill, his support runners had an equal part to play.

Frans has been the only 12 to remotely replicate the SBW model and he showed this last week with two mini breaks and perfect offloads that went to hand. He did it once against the Stormers but his support runners let him down as the offload never went to hand.

Agreed Sas, not sure why the Stormers are playing Jean at 13, where he has been ineffective. They should be playing him at 12 with the talented de Allende at 13

I agree Sasu, Jean should come back to 12....he was much better at 12 for the Boks last year. Dave I'm clearly not seeing all this stuff you are reading into Fransie's game. In my view it's mostly hype.

 Snapster I hope you are right about Frans and Hougaard is all I can say. 

I believe Mozart is raising a very valid point here and I am sometimes worried about the situation.   As a 12 you need a player requiring three attributes, namely -

*   physical strength;

*   reasonable speed in running; and

*   an advanced skills set and ball sense

All three elements are essential and missing even one can be a problem.   If physical strength is the only yardstick you can play even a heavy loosie in that position.

Despite all my comments on the issue I believe that there are really only two players at this stage in SA that really can be considered as a 12 - namely De Villiers and Steyn,   De Villiers really is not the answer - he is too old to last in that position and I have a faint suspicion that the reason why he and De Allende did not try and alternate in the past two games - is that De Villoers may not be too  happy to play at 12 and take the battering.

Steyn is the obvious answer and I hope he makes the grade by improving elements of his game,  He has a tendency to crashball without off-loading balls and there are question marks about his speed off the mark since he often enough get tackled before he reaches the gain line - but he still is the best proposition we have. There were some signs of improvement  since last year.   He seems to have lost some weight and in the warm up games he was also speedier.  

Based on the need for physical strength as a component for the job - I think the future potential candidates are Serfontein and De Allende.   Both seems to have the strength and the speed - but both needs a lot of further experience to sharpen up their performances.

From a size perspective the following stats are of value:-

Steyn    -    weight given as 110 kgs - but is likely to be 3 or 4 kgs lighter at this stage

De Villiers - 103 kgs

Serfontin   -  97 kgs

De Allende - 96 kgs.

Both Serfontein and De Allende are young and within the next two years will probably be in the vicinity of 103   kgs.    In view of their height any weight higher than that would have a serious impact on their speed.

I think that the real answer is that Steyn should be the 12 for the Springbok team - but hope he would concentrate more on passing and off-loading of balls and not purely on brute strength.   Unless he does that and crashball less frequently it may have a real detrimental affect on overall backlne play in SA.   In essence we should not only concentrate on power play - since that would leave us with a degree of predictability that can be very problematic and is in reality not the answer to our backline problems.

Saffex I have to agree that I also saw some good touches from Frans Steyn last week(cheetahs), this week against the stormers he was crashballing again without looking for the offload(which irritated me). I really hope he can get into some proper form this season as the exciting Jordaan needs to receive some good passes putting him into space.

However, I dont believe that JDV's career is all over. He is still a class act.