Ruan Pienaar is playing unbelievable rugby for Ulster

Why is it that his performances for the Springboks is so insipid?  Is it because he has to play according to Meyer's instructions and therefore not showing the top abilities he shows for Ulster.   He scored all Ulster's 22 points against Leicester - putting them out of the game - 1 try - one try conversion and 6 penalties - two of which  was from inside his own half of the field.

Pienaar is showing real class and so did Louw in his last few matches for Bath.   Pity  the other favourites of Meyer playing in Europe are do poor.     .

Sharkbok

You are of course 100% correct here.  What I have said  in the past is that European Club rugby us not on the level of Super 15 or even CC but got shot down by other posters who claimed that European Club rugby os opma higher level than SA provincial rugby.

Problem is that there are players from those clubs selected for the Springbok team on some or other basis - it must be presumed performances on that level.   Ib the whole moist of the selected from the clubs perform poorly on test level and that remains a problem.

Obviously we have players in all codes of sport who are very food on provincial and Super 15 franchise level but cannot make the grade on national level.   That remains a problem in all spheres opf life - the same can be said of for instance in the case of employment when is  said that everybody  is promoted to his own level of incompetence. 

My problem always is that a player who fails on CC level should never be selected pm the next higher level and the same applies on Super 14 as well.   Same applies to players who star on say Super 15 level - unfortunately without trying him out on national level you would never know whether he would succeed.  Some would and some won't.

Unfortunately we have problems in some positions where we need to find and develop younger players.  Scrummie os one of those.  We cannot rely on two 32 year old players to play in that position ad infinittum.  We have to find and develop younger scrummies - but the promising ones are few and far between.  Hope something comes up in Super 15 this year.  

 Mozart

I played at hooker - but that was many years ago and the game changed completely since then.

I did what U thought was right and posted what happened in Pienaar's latest match.   The subsequent discussion was on a wider basis and did not specifically deal with scrummies - or that was my impression as to what Sharksbok wrote.

Hope you are not going to try and restrict us to comment only on the positions we actually used to play in.  That would silence me forever - because our hookers are our pride and joy and I cannot find anything wrong in their performances - I dislike praise singing intensely especially if it is not really justified.