Pakie

thoughts on the Bok attack and on Manie?

You were severely critical of both.

Well they were rubbish last week and neither here nor there against the All Blacks Denny, hence the criticism. 

Obviously things went much better over the weekend. Manie was good. He looked suspect defensively again, missing two tackles in a row at one point. Like many weaknesses this will be glossed over in a runaway win because hey 48-7 who cares, but in tight games it can cause problems. His distribution was very good, some beautiful delayed passes etc. Overall our whole backline was good and they actually looked coached and cohesive, unlike last week when everyone just shoveled the ball on to the next guy while drifting towards the touchline.

A very tall order. But maybe  they believed they had a shot, that surely disappeared after the Boks first try at minute 8 of the game. After which they were going through the motions. The half time talk seemed to have some effect ……and the Boks never registered a point for 28minutes….then the Bargies were down to 13 and the floodgates opened.

I'm sure Argentina were laser focused when the All Blacks smacked them 44-6 in the WC semi too. As I mentioned at the end of the live chat, it's hard to get an idea of just how good they actually are because you never see quite the same team in action two weeks in a row - and I don't mean in terms of who plays, but in terms of how they play. It's almost like they can't rise to meet an expectation. When there are no stakes they can pull a big old rabbit out of the hat and beat anyone once. Then the next week when the whole world is watching and saying "now go do it again" they fumble and fold.

Dave the last time we lost by more than 3 tries and 7 points is probably  our 2017 loss to NZ. The last time we lost by 3 tries and 7 points at home….perhaps in the last century. They knew the only hope was a Bok red card and even then, unlikely.