SA sides and the offload

But will this happen at the national level. Even last November lowly Scotland out offloaded us 10 to 5. Can Harrassmiss let go of his security blanket and allow his players to ‘look for’ the offload.

I have my doubts

Risk management isn offload friendly...it's all about tbe numbers. 

Fact….his team doesn’t offload.

Question

Why?

Possibilities

1 He feels offloading doesn’t work in a crash ball/reset/box kick style.

2 He has tried desperately to coach offloading into his team and has failed because he either can’t explain it or his team is too dumb to get it.

Assessment

I favor option 1, he doesn’t offload because he simply doesn’t rate the tactic.

Conclusion

We can offload till we are blue in the face playing ourselves, but we won’t offload under Harrassmiss.

Case

Closed.

As usual Dave you are just blustering….we offloaded a fraction of the amount our opposition in the RC did,

Here’s the clincher, when we crushed the Bargies 29 to 10…….they offloaded 7 times to our 1. Aren’t you embarrassed?

You claim we play attacking rugby. We don’t. We do score tries mostly on turnover ball and rolling mauls after penalties near the opposition line. Tries comes as a result of the pressure we apply. 

I wish we could add some modern attacking rugby to the basics which we have rediscovered. I was vocal about the need to find those basics again…..little thinking we would abandon attacking rugby in the process. I want both….not one or the other.

But to think there isn’t an issue is delusional.

The bulls are the team that offload the most, and their top person with the most off loads is Marcel Coetzee. 

It is correct, Rassie hates the off load game, it requires more skill, Rassie have build a very simple approach, play off your 9 and use your big forwards to wrap around the corner and built pressure. If anything, he selects players like Kolbe that can feed off turn overs and attack. That is how Kolbe got his try in the world cup. Then, you have to look at some of the useless quota players that he has to select, a off load game would expose him. So it is about rucks hit, aggressive defence and kicking the ball away to create pressure. But, NZ, Aus and Eng exposed us last year. All they need to do is just tire out our rush defence, manage the kicks better and meet us up front. 

I had the same issue under snorre and Jake White, coaches stick with what they know and that has brought success but too afraid to try something. We need to be able to work on our attack, get the other team to chase. 

Yes, it looks good on the scoreboard, but doesn't really help

Very good assessment Corn. I’d add one thing,  if the other top teams get to scrum neutrality we would struggle. So many of these close games have been won through scrum penalties which we either converted into penalty points or used to set up the maul near the line.

Our scrumming dominance is largely taken for granted, but we have had nothing like our current scrum in all the years since readmission.

" All they need to do is just tire out our rush defence, manage the kicks better and meet us up front. 

Easy to say, not all that easy to do...this is nothing new, it's always been that way with the Boks, some Bok teams are just better than it than others...the current team being particularly good at it.

We have the players, but our game plan is low risk grinding the opposition to a pulp before running them dizzy with our nimble backs...only subtle changes to the match strategy now and again...and we are good at executing our game plan...Wales will struggle here...

This year we start by playing Wales at home …..walk-in the park. Then amazingly the ABs agreed to play us at Nelspruit and Ellis Park. We finally play an away game against the Bargies, but then again in SA. 

So in the RC we play 3 games at home…..1 away….and we don’t play Oz at all. If we don’t win this one it will be cause for alarm.

We won’t know where we are until the YE tour, which with England, France and Ireland is as tough as it gets.

A really strange schedule.

I thought we playd Aus 2 x Down Under?

We do play oz, if schedule hasn't changed, 27 August and 3 September. Venues still to be announced.

This from the Springbok Hall of Fame:

Well I hope that we do play them in Oz.....if we can beat them twice at home and AB here at home, we will surely be on the right track for WC.

But if we want to offload,  swapping  out Dud for Esterhozen will accomplish that. From one of the worst offloading centres to  one of the best.

You don't have to convert me Plum, I'm already on board, but Rassie, like Heineke before him, don't like the risks involved...it's obvious that the players are actively being dissuaded from offloading. 

Moz, it has been confirmed, we do pay Aus and this time it will be in Adelaide on a cricket pitch. 

Back to off-load, I remember Louw telling a story of trying to offload  back when Rassie coached the stormers, he tried something fancy but then the ball got knocked or something. Rassie looked at him, and just said, don't do that again. 

Coming back to the offload vs ruck. If you listen to the Irish commentators. Leinster do use the ruck but their speed at ruck time is next level, often less than 3 seconds. So they use the ruck to set the offside line and force teams on the back foot, but if you just keep popping the ball up then there will be no offside line and the other team can flood your support runners. 

So if you want to ruck, it has to be quick, but teams can also just spread out, so it is a really interesting contest. If teams fan out, do you use your big boys to drive, if you are losing the contact battle, offload, if the defending team come up to fast, create more rucks. 

If all fails create a human centipede and bomb the ball away. 

Man do I hate that tactic, they need to put an end to it, slows the game down and create an unfair advantage