Sharks centres miss 40% of their tackles

Against the Chiefs JP made 6 out of 11 tackles. Whitehead, the supposed Bok find made 7 out of 10. These abysmal stats aren't unusual. In the prior three games they missed 4, 2 and 5 tackles respectively.Very often our Bok centres miss no tackles.

The Bok centres missed only 7 tackles in the whole RWC, less than the 8 the Sharks centres missed against the Chiefs and 4 of those RWC tackle misses occured against Namibia, which suuggests things weren't being taken too seriously. Three tackle misses....one miss per game....sets the standard.

That puts in perspective just how bad the Sharks performance is. JP is not a centre and Whitehead remains just a promissing youngster.

Nonsense, JP has been good all season and Whitehead is the back find of the season. Tackles dont define a player and I bet most centres have those kind of stats in the S15

Moz it could also be telling us that the sharks are not coached as well defensively. How many tackles did Whitehead miss when paying for the Stormers would be an interesting stat.

I have seen JP make some match winning tackles.

Okay, you demur. So lets look at the basic centre stats pairing......defenders beaten vs tackles missed.

JP for his last 4 games since returning at centre has beaten 4 defenders and missed 12 tackles. I know you rely on your intuition but those are the abysmal facts.

Put another way....while the Sharks centres were missing 8 tackles out of 21....the Chiefs centres missed 1 tackle out of 17.

Game, set and match I'd say.

Hasbeen.... centre tackling and wing tackling  are very different. In fact 12 and 13 tackling are quite different as well. On the wing you have the touchline as your friend. JP uses that very effectively eg when he took the Fijian into touch in goal to save the RWC07 test. At 13 you have to defend both ways.....your weak shoulder gets exposed. Quite obviously JP hasn't mastered centre tackling.

Sorry Moz, but JP and Whitehead were better than their Chiefs counterparts that game and by some distance. SBW was pathetic and Kaui did absolutely nothing of note. JP's misses were not one on ones against his opposite number

Contrast Juan de Jongh who the Sappster can't stand.

De Jongh misses 5 tackles in his last 37 tackles versus JP's 5 misses in his last 11  tackles.

De Jongh beats 8 defenders while missing five tackles.....JP beats 4 defenders while missing 12.

Put succinctly De Jongh is almost twice as likely to beat a tackle as to miss one. JP is  three times as likely to get beaten as to beat a defender.

End of.

Nice Touch Moz.

Has de Jongh made one significant break all season - no and that in a side that is top of the table. JP on the otherhand is playing for middle of the table Sharks. Whitehead has made more breaks than any SA centre this S15

I wouldn't take the chiefs game alone as to why the sharks defense has been so abysmal. The chiefs probably have the most destructive center pairing in the competition. That said, Bosman is absolutely useless. 

I though Witehead did really well to contain Sunny Bill, although the Chiefs made a tun of handling errors.

Defensivley the Sharks pair might have missed more tackles but very few if any have been misses on their opposite numbers. The Sharks pair have been the most threatening on attack of all the SA pairs.

But sadly those are just assertions. JP with 4 defenders beaten in 4 games hardly constiutes a "threat" on attack.

And I agree Kingporn, the Chiefs are more dangerous. But then again, they aren't even first choice for the ABs....any aspirant Bok centres have to be able to contain them.

JP's strength is carrying the ball in traffic, his physicality gives him go forward, something wee de Jongh can only dream of.

Lets face it Moz, Nonu is hardly better than SBW and Conrad Smith is hardly better than Kaui........all have played a number of times for the AB's

Dave if you can't grasp the stats, time will prove me right. Just as it did with the ill advised Pienaar at 10 debacle.

Wrong Moz, there was nothing wrong with Pienaar at 10 at all and I would have him ahead of Morne now

Umm Dave defence is a big part of the game, I get the impression that in a game you're more impressed if a player makes 1 40 meter break but misses 8/10 tackles rather than someone who is less visible ball in hand but makes every tackle.

Nope poi-e I just know that JP does not have an issue with his defence, much like Whitehead does not, much like J.Fourie never had, but some will tell us he did!!

But Moz just posted some stats that clearly indicate there might be a problem bro...you can't just ignore a statistic because you may not like what that indicates about that player.

 I dont need stats to tell me that over his career JP has never had an issue with defence......thats my point and I also dont recall JP missing a one on one tackle against his opposite number this S15, I am not convinced with those stats anyway as it paints a picture that JP has been missing loads of tackles which is rubbish for we would have picked up on that ages ago. I have no issue with JP's tackling at all, its no better or worse than Jean's or Fourie. Same goes for Whitehead