Pollard is the clear choice

So he had made his first  four kicks….but that conversion, well in from touch, suddenly became impossible? 

It wasn’t the wind…..he pulled it. It missed by miles. I used to kick in the Cape in school on occasion, often on days with high wind . For that length of kick the divergence on a well kicked ball is no more than a foot or two. Longer kicks where the ball is slowing down diverge more. That was a kick a good school boy kicker would expect to make.

Firstly it was way high….one of his kicks  was above the upright and given. Secondly he pulled it….like a golf shot.

Perhaps it’s bmt but it’s probably more technique. He has a very fluid but long action, he delivers the ball very high. It has lots of variance….Pollard is tight and he sends the ball like a bullet,

As my golf coach recently said throw a dart  don’t lob a grenade.

So please none of this ‘childish’ bullshit, it’s a technical discussion. And one of prime interest, because our flyhalf in waiting, who we all like….cant seemingly deliver in the crunch.

Listen to the spectator on this poor quality video…just before it stops:

‘He pulled it’

By miles….case closed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg8LmLYz-bg

Oh balls…he just flat hooked it. I agree with MPower’s views, he provides a lot of other contributions. But we have two options:

1) We find our Ramos equivalent.

2 He gets a new kicking coach. Monty had similar issues, an athletic, curved  approach to the ball, lots of moving parts. Then he totally switched to a short direct run up and became a dead eye dick .

The facts is Manie would never have got us through the WC and he has just taken the Stormers out of the Champions Cup.

I've said before, 'lower trajectory needed on windy days'.................... none of the skyrocket shite.

wrong game ..

..

Dave this is just the latest example of your complete lack of objectivity when you like a player. It was very doable kick. But why don’t you explain to us why the genius Erasmus started Pollard in the WC final if you still assert Manie is reliable.

Oh what bullshit

Don’t tell me you still think this was an impossible kick Anger. Hell we have seen guys put the ball over in far more crucial matches under far worse conditions.

Jannie de Beer got the Boks into the 99 semi playoff against Oz, landing a kick through driving rain and 30 mile an hour wind from 40 metres out. I was there, you could hardly see.

Why? Not because of BMT but because his fundamentals were good.

All the time….many of Pollard’s kicks at the WC  were made in conditions you claimed to be impossible for running rugby.

And then there’s this. At kickoff time the wind was blowing at 31 miles an hour. By the end of the match the wind had dropped by a third:

And then there’s this, average wind speed in Cape Town in early April is 12mph. So the wind at 21 mph was hardly unusual by the time Manie hit the big hook.

On the day, at the moment he kicked it was 21 mph in Cape Town according to the weather service, I bet it is 21 mph in a third of the games they play.

If you watch Hastoy’s attempted conversion a few minutes earlier the ball hardly diverts from the straight path….2 feet at most. Manie’s kick missed by more than 2 feet which meant it was going to miss wind or no wind.

Some reports from those behind the posts say it missed by 5 metres, consistent with the reactions of those on the field watching.

No I don’t, I went to the Cape Town weather service…they reported 21 mph at 6.00 o clock.

Libbok has a kicking coach at the Stormers, going by his past comments he has absolute faith and confidence in him.

And just by the by, Libbok would make any world class rugby team i.e Oz, NZ, England and France etc......SAFFA coaches would have no idea as to how to take him to another level or bring out the best in him. Butch James was by far our best flyhalf but even he played the position as a part inside centre so then other than him hit me with one who was half decent?

I think Pollard is superior to Butch. He is a good hard yards runner, better than Butch who did little with ball in hand. And Butch’s tackling technique was dubious even back then. Today he would be a card magnet….not that Pollard’s defense is great. AndPollards kicking clinches it.

Manie may have great confidence in his kicking coach, but he is failing with the boot. There is no doubt he lost the Irish test, would probably have lost the French test if Pollard hadn’t subbed on. Now the la Rochelle knockout.

Either somebody else needs to take over or he has to get better instruction. This kicking thing is going to destroy his career. There’s also the defense to fix, but that’s not as potentially catastrophic and can be compensated for to some extent.

Libbok brings other things to the table, he has natural flyhalf qualities that Pollard doesn't possess and as I've stated in my above post, Pollard is the man when it comes to a  gameplan which is based on weaponizing the scrum for him to milk the penalty. In short Pollard is perfect for the RWC based on the Bok gameplan. 

He is not your flyhalf for the Rugby Championships which has a completely different format to the RWC. The results show that historically the RWC format favours the Boks and that the Rugby Championship format doesn't.

Vs France 5 tackles made/5 missed.

Vs Ireland 4 tackles made/3 missed

Vs Scotland 4 tackles made/3 missed

The RC will test his defense, it’s not just the kicking. It’s hard for players to succeed with a major vulnerability. He needs to fix his defense and fix or  give up the place kicking. 

That said Pollard made 8 and missed 9 tackles against NZ…so the bar isn’t that high. But one does get the sense Manie is more of a target than Pollard

The wind and the angle of the kick are legitimate reasons for missing the kick in the URC.

Nope, definitely not a Jantjies clone, I didn't like him thought he was a poor apology of a flyhalf and I'm glad I've seen the back of him. Libbok to my eye has a bit of Larkham about him and if Brown can steer him in the right direction or add the finishing touches we might have the best Bok flyhalf ever......who knows? One thing for sure the Boks need to up their strategy, being a one trick pony is never good and I believe Rassie has realised that the simple game plans he employed is not going to win him the next RWC. The Boks need to find different means to win test matches and perhaps who knows he might fulfill the role.

I personally do believe that there might have been some "hook" involved in that kick...it was not all weather to blame.

But let's at least give a fair asse ssment here of what transpired this weekend, weather wise.

Given the current wind conditions, one would think that Manie would have started it out wider to compensate for the wind that he had already made some kicks in.

Having said that though, I heard the commentators specifically mentioning before this last kick from Manie, that it would be a very difficult kick to make, purely because of the swirling wind inside the stadium itself.

Given that this past weekend, Cape Town had almost record level winds, so strong that trucks were being blown off the road, which is why they announced a level 9 weather warning to all residents....and even resulted in schools being closed on Monday.

According to numerous news reports, this started on Saturday, and not Sunday.

So, starting from Saturday, I assume before this game even started... 100 trees were uprooted, and over 3 000 structures were seriously damaged..... and heavy commercial vehicles were being blown off the road....so one can only imagine what it was like inside that stadium, never mind outside it.

so one can only imagine what it was like inside that stadium, never mind outside it.

Well DA you've just put the truth ahead of a good story but jokes aside it sounds like mother nature played a big part in why Libbok missed a difficult kick.