This starts a short series adressing a number of fallacies that keep coming about SA rugby.
SA rugby supporters usually rely on a rhetorical strategy that is about lining up an endless list of non arguments, with the hope of wasting time as they expect each of them to be corrected.
Of course, it is pointless to do so as adressing a few of them is more than enough to disqualify the rest.
One fallacy is that SA forwards are the best in the world.when games after games, the opposite is being shown.
First thing first, when comparing things, a bench mark must be issued. A step that is dismissed in order to feed the delusion.
Hence the following benchmark:
over the decades, the game has grown more and more demanding on forwards, the list of tasks they may perform has been increasing,competing at set pieces, competing at rucks, faster and faster defensive positioning and repositioning, running the ball, passing the ball, ball carries etc
One biggest difficulty for a modern day forward is transitioning, being able to shift from one set of tasks to another cleanly.
This
benchmark, while rough, is enough to expose the fraud as set by SA
rugby. Simply treat SA forwards by the expectations put on modern game
forwards.
In order to keep pretending, SA rugby rely on one trick: while other rugbys have grown more and more demanding on tasks, they have chosen to decrease the number of tasks their forwards are expected to perform.
Game after game, it has been shown that SA forwards give up on a(n) (increasingly) large number of tasks, they focus on a reduced set of tasks (empoverishing the game doing so by the way)
Claiming that SA forwards are the best in the world amounts to claiming that an athlete is the best decathlon athlete in the world because the athlete marginally performs best at 100 dash run and long jump while not taking any of the other events.
Or claiming that SA wingers are the best in the world because they chase every single ball wilth full energy.
In order to keep pretending, SA rugby keep empoverishing the game, it has grown less and less demaning on the tasks required to be performed. With the sad idea that in doing so, they can pretend to be on par with other nations.
