Quarter Finals World Cup for Boks

Our three World Cup wins had low ranked opponents in the quater final yet Fiji gave us a scare in 2007.Samoa, Fiji and Japan were the three.

 The other four World Cups saw us play England, Aussie, NZ and Wales,losing two and winning two. THe most famous of those for me was Jannie de Beer with his drop goals in England vs England.

We have it tougher setting there than ever before, those Scots are flying high therefore to win this one will be huge.Maybe Ireland get knocked out before the quarter mmmm ok there are still Tonga and Romania and we have lost to Japan so nothing is dead cert. 

NZ might have to beat Namibia, Italy and Uruguay to get into the quarters... should be easy. 

Actually the Jannie de Beer match was in Paris. I was at the follow semi final, and the Aussies had been coached to run hard at de Beer’s right side when he was in drop kick position. He did, however, land a brilliant penalty through driving rain to level up the overtime score. Only to see Larkham beat us, ironically with a drop kick.

Yes correct, maybe you know who landed the longest drop goal of all time?

Gerry Brand did for the Boks against England at Twickenham in 1932 massive 77.7m

We won that game 7-0 and only lost one game on the tour against an east Midlands team. Also on tour we drew with a South Scotland team 0-0

Close contests on those days Ireland we beat 8 -3 and Wales 8-3, Scotland 6-3.

Never knew that about Jerry Brand….even before my time! Hahaha!

Rankings and projections before the tournament starts need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Nobody saw Argentina and Fiji coming in 2007. In fact, the three favorites were New Zealand, France, and Ireland. None of the three played well. Likewise Samoa in 2011, or Japan in 2015. All we know is that there are a lot of opponents who have the capacity to take us out. Without line integrity - statistically the worst of all top 10 nations last season - the likes of Japan and Scotland become more dangerous. It'd be hard to imagine all of Ireland, France, New Zealand, Scotland having a bad tournament. Ireland will likely misfire, France will be patchy, and Scotland will show glimpses of brilliance and be eliminated. We'll get through to the semi-final where out luck will run out. Australia are going under the radar, and I think that's a mistake. 

Well, I think traditionally SA are better setup to play tournament or knockout rugby as it is drilled into our players from age group. 

The last time SA actually won the World Cup without anyone really moaning was in 95, we beat Australia, France and New Zealand. Although James Dalton nearly cost us the tournament. That guy is such an idiot, even when listening to him today. A real skollie. 

Agree the other world cups were a bit easier where we won. 

But, don't forget all the issues from the administrators and coaches. 

Do yourself a favour and watch a few interviews on YouTube and a very cheesy guy who has player interviews on his show called Front Row rugby. Really enlightening listening to these guys. 

You get their take on what they thought of the coaches, but he even had Ian Macintosh on there. 

So we are still stuck with unprofessionalism unfortunately and politics. 

But Ollie Le Roux was the best one I heard and his view on why Mallet and Straulie ultimately failed. But it all boils down to losing the locker room and the respect of the players. The players were getting Gatvol with Mallet after a while. His strange selections and not backing his players. 

Ollie mentioned that Bobby was a fantastic player, but Mallet should have left him on the bench because he was the original bomb squad as he and Bobby use to come on in the last 20 minutes to really create a strong counter offence. 

But Ollie also speaks very highly of Rassie

Who knows, maybe Rassie can motivate the players one more time and just F*ck Up the Irish

On playing the Irish, we pretty much know what they will throw at us, we may have lost two very close game to France and Ireland last year but we know exactly what is coming our way. All the Irish teams play very similar, Leinster is pretty much Ireland. 

My preferred route would be to beat 

Scotland > Ireland > New Zealand > England > France 

Just hope we can beat Australia in the championship and then no-one can argue that we had an easy draw

"The last time SA actually won the World Cup without anyone really moaning was in 95"

Suzie