15 Joubert
14 Kolbe
13 Gerber
12 de Allende
11 Habana
10 Pollard
9 du Preez
1 Os
2 Bismark
3 Malherbe
4 Eben
5 Matfield
6 Kolisi
7 PSDT
8 Vermeulen
For me it’s close at 9 with Joost, at 2 with Marx at 1 with Beast and Ox and at 12 with Jean
12 Pieter Muller
10 has to be Naas, surely.
SFM could be in the all time conversation soon.
The first name on my list would be Henry Honiball.
I would pick him with or without Naas in the equation.
Naas is probably too long ago.
Give Naas his dues, he was a rugby genius . . . as any fule kno.
Joost at 9 and HH at 10.
Not much wrong with the rest of the team.
Pollard for me at 10 and I’d go Joost at 9
Could you give us a link….the commentary would add to the selection.
I’ll try find the video it was on Facebook
Joost at 9 for me.
Becs you just liked Joost’s blue eyes
Ummmm I’m not a fan of blue eyes in general.
I just think he was a fantastic player.
My post WW2 side:
HO de Villiers
Kolbe
Gerber
JdV
Habana
Pollard
Joost
Beast
Marx
Jaap Becker
Etzebeth
Matfield
Jan Ellis
Schalk Burger
Vermeulen (captain)
Good team!
I suppose it all depends on if you're saying that a modern day player like Duane Vermeulen is better than Hennie Muller who was a relative pipsqueak.
Yes, he probably is bigger, fitter and faster but when it comes to these all-time things, you have to measure players by their contemporaries, not by future professionals.
My way, Hennie Muller is all-time Springbok captain all day long. A truly great Springbok. Probably our best ever up until isolation.
A side without recognition of Frik du Preez is also not really worth much. Same for Danie Craven but we did say post WW2.
Hennie and Frik, they may be half the size of the modern day players but they were great Springbok warriors who deserve a starting place in any Post WW2 team.
Unless you're not measuring by contemporaries in which case, babble away.
Vermeulen faster than Hennie Muller. Nonsense….Muller famously kept pace with the Aussie wing in 53. He wasn’t called Windhond for nothing. If you were playing 1950s rugby one might very well have chosen Muller.
As for captaincy….Muller was the chosen captain only for the Wallabies in 53….he inherited the captaincy in 51 because Basil Kenyon had a serious eye injury. And we shockingly lost one test to Australia at home. So again….nonsense.
Now Frik, a wonderful player who probably should have been moved to blindside. Because of his athleticism he was a great lineout forward. But that was in the days of no lifting. With that key skill negated, his best argument was ball carrying…but again probably better used as a blindside.
Babble back if you like.
No none of those old players can begin to compare to the modern player so not worth including in the same side.
Its on par with saying Bradman was an unbelievable bat but footage shows the bowlers no better than your pub 3rd team and his technique looked pretty limited
I pretty much agree with Schalk and Jean’s side but would have Marx at 2 and Joost at 9
If RG had played more he’d be ahead of Matfield
I loved Skinstad at 8 so would be tempted to have him ahead of Duan
Willemse at 15 or the creativity of Willie
Here is the link to the Facebook post by Jean and Schalk
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1Aq6NkJTkk/?mibextid=wwXIfr
The proposition is to pick players who in their generation had the most impact. In that context Hennie Muller would look more like Hanekom, taller and heavier than he was in his prime.
The tricky part is the game has changed…so are you choosing a team to play modern rugby, or the rugby each candidate participated in… .or a blend. Vermeulen with his tight exchange and fetching skills is clearly better suited to the tight modern game
For me it’s a bit of a weighted average….call it 1998 rugby. I’m confident all the players in my post war team would have been very competitive playing 1998 rugby….which I much prefer to today’s game.
For me it’s virtually two different games - amateur vs professional
It would make better sense to select an amateur best and a professional best
You just can’t compare them
The best pro team would put 50 points over the amateurs by halftime
Probably true….but there are individuals who would still be great today. Here’s one way of looking at it, Bolt ran the hundred 0.36 seconds faster than Hines in 1968…in the 30m distances you sprint on a rugby field perhaps a meter faster. Would that make Hines uncompetitive if he had other skills, like quick reactions that could easily offset that yard, I doubt it.
A guy like Fassi would be devastating in any era.
For me, instinct is the timeless quality that transcends eras.
Basically, the stuff that isn't taught but rather happen at some type of level where the mind and body combine without thinking to produce an extraordinary result.
A great example of terrible instinct is DDA.
On a totally different theme, the Saints have a display at the moment, charting the success of our Greatest Ever team, which played in the 60’s and 70’s. My late uncle is included and has a panel all about himself. A proud moment and I’m just so sorry he’s not here to see it.
It is hard to judge players from the past against the present though.
"ts on par with saying Bradman was an unbelievable bat but footage shows the bowlers no better than your pub 3rd team and his technique looked pretty limited"
No. I won't have that.
Statistically, the greatest sportsman who ever lived.
Yep statistically but context tells a completely different story
Moz the sprint is very different to rugby
Apart from modern sprinters being physically better equipped and probably on better diets the art of sprinting has hardly changed
Whereas rugby has completely changed from the players to the way the game is played
For sure some of those amateur players would have fitted into the modern game, probably playing completely different positions to the ones they played back then and being totally different physique wise with all those gym sessions accompanied by strict diets
Context?
Like he changed the game. England went to the lengths of the Bodyline series to try and beat him . . . and failed.
Sorry, you just can't argue with the statistics. His test average of 99.47 or whatever stands out so far from anyone else that he can't just be considered the greatest batsman of all time but a candidate for greatest sportsman of all time . . . . if you have enough cricket supporters.
Please don't try and refute this by talking about the standard of bowling or limited technique, what he did to bowlers has never been done before or since. In any era.
If it was so easy in Bradman's day, where are Bradman's contemporaries in the stats?
Name them.
Would he have achieved those stats facing the Lillee’s, Donald’s, Steyn’s, Warne’s, Marshall’s, Robert’s of this world - no chance in hell
He was clearly ahead of his time but for me context is the crux.
Footage of the bowling back then is laughable but only laughable when compared to how the game is played today
"Footage of the bowling back then is laughable"
Okay . . . then who are Bradman's contemporaries who also took advantage of this laughable bowling? Where are they on the stats?
It's a fair question.
Like I said he was clearly way ahead of his time - his technique was a little faulty probably because not much tweaking happened back then but he was pretty fluid
My point is that when I watch him I don’t see someone who is going to dominate a modern attack
He was effectively an Amla facing the club side I played for every Sunday - that’s my take on reality
Would I rather face Donald at 140km/h on a smooth modern pitch or some dingbat from the 1930s on a snake pit bowling 125km/h?
I'll take Donald on a modern pitch thanks.
Larwood was awesome….have you seen a video of him bowling? And Bradman didn’t have a helmet.
"My point is that when I watch him I don’t see someone who is going to dominate a modern attack"
Well, my point is that he dominated the bowling to a greater extent than any batsman since.
No need for time travel. You don't have to picture Bradman facing Shoaib Akhtar. Just concentrate on what Bradman did to what people called a modern attack back in the 1930s.
I'll ask you the same question you've been dodging for some time now . . . whatever you think of Bradman's technique or how easy batting was back then, where are his contemporaries on the stats list? How come the 2nd best guy from that era doesn't have an average close to Bradman's?
Time travel is a must for me - the bowling he faced back then was modern day club level regardless of what the 2nd best bat of that time averaged
Its of no consequence to me when I am able to view the standard of bowling Bradman was up
against back then
I’m not saying he was poor, anything but - I’m saying you can’t compare a player back then to one now - I used him as an example of the past versus the current in rugby
Just like the bowling back then was pretty damn average, so was the standard of rugby played compared to today. Take the line outs for instance - it was a fiasco free for all
"Its of no consequence to me when I am able to view the standard of bowling Bradman was up
against back then"
Yes, it must have been so easy to score runs against that standard of bowling . . . that's why all the batsmen of that era are so high up on the all-time averages . . . well, okay, not all of them . . . maybe some of them . . maybe three or four . . . nope . . . just the one. Bradman.
Here are the top 20 Test cricketers by career batting average (minimum 20 innings):
RankPlayerCountryAverageImagine what Kallis would have averaged facing those bowlers
It would have been equivalent to me bowling my offies to Kallis
xcvbnm
Saffex, let me take a try at Rooi’s question for you. I'm only doing it because you'll stay stuck on comparing modern players with all their finely tuned training techniques to guys from a century ago.
These days, you’re probably more likely to find top-level players just because way more people play the game. If you’re a kid in a South African school and you’ve got some talent, chances are your school has a cricket team and you’ll get to play 12–16 games a season, easy.
Back in Bradman’s time, way fewer people had access to organised sport. So if someone gifted actually made it onto a cricket field, they weren’t facing nearly the same depth of competition. And that probably held true all the way through to the international level.
So, today’s best players are up against guys a lot closer to their level than someone like Bradman ever was. It’s a numbers game, really.
That doesn't completely explain Bradman's record, but probably does account for some of the disparity between his average and everybody else's.
Yep true regarding the numbers
Effectively I see Bradman having the talent of a modern day bat like say Amla facing modern day club level bowlers back then
As I said originally he was probably way ahead of his time
Transport Bradman to today and give him all the modern day support players receive today and would he average 99 in test matches today - no fucking way
He would be on par with the likes of Kallis, Lara, Sachin etc
If one excels in a particular era, they will excel in any era.
Greatness transcends the era.
Another example to support the argument: why did no one else achieve statistics comparable to Bradman's during his era?