Pollard and Am (FIT), Lood out of World Cup

Just scanning the news to see who our wonderful coaches will be selecting. Unfortunately it has been reported that 3 of our key players will be ruled out of the World Cup. 

To be honest, we knew Pollard recovery wasn't going so well. 

Am haven't really regained his form all season and suffer a knee injury in the final warm up game. I also question the bok management for using him in every single game when they had Kriel that was doing a good job. 

Lood I'm least concerned about. He is one of those players that I struggle to understand his role in the team, but now we are left with Orie. 

The worst part is that we only have Libbok with very little experience and have shown to buckle under pressure. Willemse is our next backup and Jantjies haven't played a single test in more than a year and was completely useless in his last test. 

This management team have squandered so many chances to build depth and get the right players involved

Yeah, I thought it was just some click bait at first, but that is massive blow if Pollard and Am is out. We don't have a 2nd 13 other than De Allende that had a few games there last year. 

Who is going to be our back up 10?

No b ig surprises yet. Grant Williams is in as one of 4 scrumhalves.

Still no Am, Pollard or Lood . . .

Orie is in . . .

Siya is named. That's it. No Pollard, Am or Lood.

From Supersport:

"Am and Pollard have been included in a group of five players who will leave South Africa with the squad on Saturday ahead of the two remaining warmup games, against Wales in Cardiff on 19 August and New Zealand in London on 25 August. That suggests that they will be continuing with rehabilitation from injuries and may be called on if their recoveries go smooth enough and there are injuries during the World Cup. They, along with De Jager, are also in a group of nine players placed on standby.

However, for them to feature at the World Cup would now require someone in the 33-man squad named on Tuesday to be injured during the tournament. The World Cup rules are quite strict when it comes to the naming of the squad and who can be used after that. "

Well there it is…..Harrassmiss has an excuse to feed to the faithful. The fact that we have only one injury prone 30 year old flyhalf  and a no others that have been properly annealed in test rugby, will not occur.

Losing both Pollard and Am is huge. Pollard is the foundation of our tight game…..Am is the link that enabled many of our crucial backline tries. Both approaches have become harder.

Libbok is a fabulous player, but his performance in the European finals a few months back, doesn’t give one much confidence….nor did his kicking last Saturday.

Maybe…..Willemse/Esterhozen/Dud….with Kolbe doing the kicking.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Pollard and/or Am return to the squad in a few weeks when one of our 4 scrumhalves get an "injury" or "concussion" . Same goes for one of the back three. 

That's the only reason I can think of that you'd take 4 scrumhalves and Moodie as well as Mapimpi. 

Likely Moodie and William's will be "sacrificed" somewhere along the way.

Sounds about right Xavi…..that kind of subterfuge will appeal to Harrassmiss. Pollard needs game time though…even if fit.

You have two decent locks but Orie is not up to it and Snyman needs to convince he can play 80 minutes.

Lood should replace Orie but we know the quota problem. 

Agreed Pollard and Am will be missed. 

2 fly halves, 3 centers and one Fullback. But 4 scrummies and 4 wings. Must think certain players can cover multiple positions. 

Two warm up tests will give us a clearer picture as to where we are. 

So it appears Lood has Pericarditis which is keeping him out of the squad. 

I'm baffled...

Yes doubtless if Pollard, Lood and Am ever recover etc they will be called up. One scummie, wing and open side flanker will get concussed or stub his toe and be sent home. 

Rassie has thought this through. Silly IRB rules. The squad of 33 is fine but a country should be allowed to replace players as they see fit. 

I see ou Mozzzz and Deus are champing at the bit to have a go at Rassie. Years of being made a fool of by Rassie would in their eyes end if Boks didn't make it out of the Pool stage. In fact even if Rassie ended up being victorious he would be trashed as happened last time. 

Frankly I cannot ever recall a bigger rugby comment blunder by anybody than those comments made by these two duds after the last RWC. 

Think of it they trashed the side that won the RWC. They trashed the payer that was voted IRB player of the year. They trashed the man who was voted coach of the year.  They trashed Allende who everyone agreed had a very good RWC. 

I challenge anybody to provide evidence of a bigger sequence of comment blunders than these. It can't be done. Nobody has EVER been as wrong rugby wise. Clearly duds  Mozzzz and Deus lack rugby acumen. 

So that is why these two duds are desperately hoping the Boks will bomb out. 

And yes the truth is the absence of Pollard, Am and Lood is indeed a  blow. Hopefully they can still recover fitness and form. 

Very concerning Draad that you say Lood has pericarditis - one of the big side effects of the deadly jab. 

Who foretold the demise of Lambie, Goosen, Mvovo, Watson, Pienaar at 10, Lood, Damian, JJ, Kriel, Bekker, Kolisi, Steph et al years in advance? There is no measure of performance or video evidence to disprove a single position I have ever taken. Look at the most recent incident involving Willemse and Libbok, when Libbok foundered whilst Willie was playing 10 most of the game! Marx was the turning point. What did closer investigation find? He was a non factor. So too Thor. Beenbag, you smoke some fantastic dagga. Be sure to give some to Saddex, it might lighten the portly fellow up. 

YAWN... the word of a man who has nothing to say, no retort, but is desperate to make it known that he is there, and he very much disapproves . I say man, but is this the maturity one expects of a man? 

Erasmus is the greatest coach of all time. How dare you display such arrogance in questioning him? Your negativity is uncalled for and unwarranted. What have you ever done to presume you know better? Nobody knows who you are. Let that sink in. 

So apparently Pollard is near to full fitness and so is Am. What I don't understand why these smoke and mirrors. 

To be honest, I was really worried whether Kolisi would even make it up to 40 min. However, he was running at full pace, made contact, hit rucks, made tackles and really impressed with his general form. 

Am has been in and out of form and injury.

So, no they say both Am and Pollard will be ready for selection for the World Cup game. 

On one hand Kolisi came through with flying colours, on the other hand, Am hasn't quite regained his form. 

So do we gamble with Pollard, he hasn't played since April. How will he shake off the rust. Scotland is not the game to do that.

But then again, Libbok has been extremely poor with his kicking. His mental problems is holding him back. So are we better off having Pollard start who has proven how well he can kick under pressure. Manie has had 7 games now and in the last 2 games he was completely off target. Even his last kick at post, when Duanne threw him the ball, was a simple straight kick and you wold expect your flyhallf to get it. It was the last play of the game and he had no pressure on him. 

So for me, Manie has completely dropped out of the picture 

As Nienaber said in the clip, Pollard is now ready to play. So the question then becomes how does Pollard (or Am or Lood) get into the squad. What Nienaber said was that this could only happen because of injury to squad members. 

10 weeks to RWC so its possible an injury might happen. Plus injuries at RWC,

See what happens. I was very impressed with Liboks line kicking , distribution and pace. They can work on his kicking as most of his misses shaved the posts. Faf also can kick well. 

You can rooiwtit. I am open to correct information. Don't be scared. spill the beans.

Why is the October Revolution celebrated in November? I think Russia bot HasBeen-ou hasn’t heard that in 1918 they final switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian. Still that only explains 10 days…the rest is a mystery.

Libbok has proven that he cannot take the step up to test rugby. All aspects of his game are inadequate. Thus, Pollard is a much needed boost. Even at half his best, 50% fitness, he is vastly superior. It doesn't account for the poor coaching though.