So why did the Boks lose the RWC semi by 2 points?

Some point to the Boks kicking the ball more. They didn't. NZ kicked the ball more, but less as a percentage of possession. But that in turn is totally down to field position. The  Boks had only 33% of the territory. When you are deep in your half you typically kick a much higher percentage.
Which raises the question why the Boks were so deep. Look no further than pressure NZ successfully applied....pressure which had them conceding 14 penalties to the Boks 6. They also beat many  more defenders 20 to 3. Which speaks to their line speed. Their centers beat 3 times the defenders our's did and twice the defenders the Boks as a whole did.
A dominant defence not only stops opponents from running the ball, it ultimately forces mistakes which lead to effective running opportunities, as opposed to the well policed runs off phase play.
We lost the WC because NZ were more effective ball in hand seen from the left. Or because their defence was quicker off the line and far more water tight. I incline to the latter view.
HM's biggest mistake was playing the two weakest defending centers in a WC knockout, when centre defence has always been key in these games.
Which is not to say we were potent up front. Four lineouts lost account for a fair share of both our territory and possession deficits. But it was the lack of a dominant defence that nailed us. The Sharks showed how it could have been done.

 Mozart
If ever there was a crime against the game of rugby it was committed by the Springboks in the semi-final game of the WC.  Meyer was instrumental in the game plan used - or shall I call it by its real name - the sham they pretended to use as a game plan.   
Rugby is supposed to be a game comprising both attack and defense.  The problem was there was NO attack in evidence in the Springbok team that day - there was just repetitive rubbish in evidence. The whole game comprised of handing the ball over to the AB's and let them counter-attack.
It was the biggest disgrace ever in Springbok rugby - the worst game the public ever had to watch.  Fact is the AB's should have won by a distance - and it was a miracle it did not happen.
Fact is the game was so obviously a farce - it was the main reason why ex-Springboks started an agitation to ensure Meyer's contract is not renewed.
You should be ashamed to point fingers at players and not lay the blame where it really was.   That you try and justify the unjustifiable indicates a serious lack of knowledge of the game of rugby on your part.  
        

Crime, sham,disgrace, ashamed, agitation, unjustifiable....blather. Not a single complex rugby thought. I'm wasting my time with you Tokkie.  

 What concrete is there in the garbage you wrote above.   Zero.  Blame the players you dislike for losing of the game is all that you really mention.  There was no real game plan - handing over ball possession to the AB's to counter-attack was all there was from a rugby perspective.
What positives were there in the game where the Springboks never launched a reasonable attack and used the backline only to defend - it is not rugby as the game should be played.
However, you are unique in that you try and glorify the 2 point loss as if it is of any value - no team can defend only and hope to win any game.   L ets be blunt - what happened that day was BS in capital letters.        

 Moz, the answer to your question can be gleaned from the stats of the previous game. The one between the Boks and Wales. Boks had ridiculous possessional, territorial and general man for man advantage in almost every position yet only just manage to win the game. Why did they almost lose when they should have strolled it? Well because despite said advantages they never once in 80 minutes let the ball go from 9 to 14/15. There are very few sports that you will ever be succesful at by being that predictable. I mentioned it before, but Duane's comment when interviewed after the game was very telling. He was asked about the offload to Du Preez and said something along the lines of "I saw there was a gap but the coach always tells us NOT to off-load..." Any opposition playing against the Boks thus knew they would crash ball and never off load. IE Keep the ball but do nothing with it except tire themselves out. What kind if idiot game plan is that? From Meyer's point of view it was the right one, since he believed that SA players don't know how to offload. For me it's simple. He didn't know what his players could do and so made an inferior game plan based on false logic/erroneous belief or whatever you'd like to call it. In my opinion the only reason the score was close in the end was due to AB nerves. Anyone who watched the game would easily tell you that the scoreboard told only a fraction of the story. It was a horrible WC for the Boks and I put 90% of the blame on Meyer.

 For the same reasons the ABs only just won the match over the Boks,despite having  67% of the territory and 57%  of possession. In the RWC defence is a great equalizer. 
As for letting the ball go down the backline, we tried that in the Ellis Park test in 2013. When a player like JJ got turned out wide it was an opposition try. Nothing was going to come of shoveling the ball down the backline.
Every try the Sharks scored yesterday came from turnover ball or set piece dominance. Regular passing down the backline died with the modern rush defence. Today you need a breach and maybe one pass to beat the last defender. The game has changed.

Moz, you can't honestly be saying that it's normal that for a full 80 minutes the ball does not once go from 9 to wing. The ABs passed the ball up and down the line in the semi. A rush defence is very vulnerable to chips & grubbers. Nobody is saying the Boks needed to suddenly find magic back line play. Just that constantly using a crash ball with zero offloading is bit moronic. That's all. Also, the example you use about Ellis Park in 2013 is a bad one for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because the Boks didn't just need to win the game. They needed to win by two tries or something like that. It was a hail Mary game plan. And secondly, the Boks had not been playing that way and we're not used to it. So yes, they did lose that particular game. But again, the scoreboard was a tad deceiving.

 Plum, I played flyhalf and centre, for me rugby was about sidesteps and taking the outside gap if you had enough gas. But things have changed, the line speed and continuity of the defensive wall means there are no gaps....you have to breach that wall. 
Thats true of regular tests, but even more true at RWCs. Defence is paramount when equals meet in WC knockout games.
In these circumstances every time you go into the tackle a turnover is a real possibility. So you Protect against that by running mostly in the opponents half. 
But we weren't there very often. Oddly enough our 6 goal kicks contributed to that. We get into their half, force a penalty and then get the ball back inside our 22, we lose probably 35 metres on average. Do that 6 times and you have lost over 200 metres of territory.
No doubt HM became very conservative after Japan, but the semi had strange dynamics, we were in the game all the way without sustained possession inside their half.
My own game plan would be to only run off turnover ball in your own half. But to supercharge that possibility with at least one power defender at centre. A combination of Kriel and Allende was not defensively powerful enough to make things happen. Any other passing in your own half should just be to set up the kick.

In the opponent's half space gets very narrow. So you have to get them to defend the whole space, which means you have to use passes, offloads, power runners to breach tackles, chips behind or grubbers through the defence and open side kicks to the wings.
Within the 22 cuts onto the ball at pace becomes one of the ways of getting over the line. Kriel did this well in the RC, not at the WC.
I'm not an advocate of up and unders unless you have one  of those rare players who win balls regularly in the air. The recent red cards for mistimed contesting make this tactic even more questionable.
My own view is the phase passing the Lions try will not work against teams with power backs and quick agressive loose forwards.
Everybody loves seeing wings running gloriously through space....it happens because the space was created in the first place....there is no space in test rugby.

 This sounds typical of why there should be no rugby played in tests.   There is no  space in tests - so no use for backline players to keep ball in hand and no possibililty to use backline players to create any try-scoring opportunities - hence the backline is their to defend only.
We got another convertible penalty in that test and Matfield was stupid enough to have the penalty reversed - but that would never be admitted by or even mentioned by Mozart - another reason for the loss.   Instead Matfield caused another series of attacks from a line-out in the Springboks 22.   
You are not in favour of kicking up and unders  - yet other than passing the ball back to the forwards that was all  Du Preez did, yet you praise him to high heaven for doing what he was not supposed to do.   
You might admit it - whenever the Springboks got the ball in the WC - the whole effort was buggered up comprehensively by stupid one-dimensional play.   Plum was right - the whole saga was aimed at never to use a ball properly - just hand it back to the AB's - like Burger did so famously in the Springboks 22 - leading to Barrett's try - another unmentionable. 
There is a long history of no tries being scored by the Springboks in crucial tests with a  hope that the opposition will give away convertible penalties and that it could lead to victory.   If that dies not happen - there is no opportunities created for scoring of tries,   To even justify what happened in the WC  semi is absolute crap and a recipe for disaster.   Meyer with his stupid one-dimensional approach was the reason why the Springboks did so poorly in that game and he was to blame entirely for the fiasco.
To compare that fiasco with the game played by the Sharks on Saturday was a total misrepresentation of facts.                                         

 Buggered up, stupid, one dimensional, unmentionable, crap, recipe for disaster, fiasco, did so poorly. All about a game we lost by 2 points to the best team in the game, which enthralled every true rugby fan and went down to the wire. 
Some rugby fan.

 Enthralled every true rugby fan?  Every true rugby fan was horrified by the crap the Springboks dished up that day.   There was not a single ex-Springbok that had anything positive to say about that test - but Mozart said he was enthralled by the repetitive dumb rugby produced.   Rugby idiocy enthrall rugby idiots!!!!!!!!!!!          

 This was our problem
Jerome Kaino of New Zealand runs to score a try

 From the Telegraph
We knew that South Africa meant business when they had taken the lead after just two minutes. But New Zealand responded immediately as Jerome Kaino began the movement by charging over the gain line before the ball was moved into the middle of the field. From there, New Zealand attacked back from where the ball had come and caught the South African defence in two minds. There was not really any need to blitz up, but Bryan Habana did so and it allowed Ri chie McCaw to pop a lovely overhead pass to Kaino, who brushed off De Jager’s tackle rather too easily to score.

 The whole game plan was out problem.  Please take note of the whole game - but just one simple question.  How easy was it for Barrett to dislodge the ball from Burger to set up the second AB try?   Never mentioned by you - but please explain that one.  And also deal with the turn-around of the penalty by Matfield's stupidity.     

 I think it's dishonest to apportion the blame to just one player, collectively I hold Habana, De Jager and Matfield responsible but take a bow HM for getting the team so close to victory. Carter put in a superb display and I guess we'd never know whether the AB's would have won without him.

All ancient history now.
Why not debate the game plan that the Boks should use for June internationals or effectiveness of the game plans the S18 teams are employing.

In the coming weeks we will get some insight into the effectiveness of what I call the "trad vs. mad" SA style of play. Trad is "traditional SA style of play being coined by Mozart (what we saw the Sharks play this weekend was not fully traditional SA rugby though); and the "mad" style of play being more balanced rugby.

Key games to see the effectiveness of the 2 styles are:

 Lions vs Bulls. 

 Sharks vs Lions. 

Also, the Tahs vs. Bulls game next weekend should reveal something as the Tahs are more balanced.

I don't count the Cheetahs games as the Cheetahs are too one dimensional & do not have a decent pack. Stormers could give the Bulls a hard time so we could learn something from that game. You will also notice how soft the schedule is for the SA teams.

Bulls

Week

Opposition

 

12

Tahs

 Competitive

13

Stormers

 Competitive

14

Lions

*Trad vs mad game plans competitive

15

Jags

 easy

16

Sunwolves

 easy

17

Cheetahs

*Trad vs mad game plans easy

Only 2 or 3 tough games.

Sharks

Week

Opposition

 

12

Jags

easy 

13

Kings

 easy

14

Bye

 

15

Lions

*Trad vs mad game plans competitive

16

Cheetahs

*Trad vs mad game plans easy

17

Sunwolves

 easy

Only 1 tough game

Lions

Week

Opposition

 

12

Blues

 Competitive 

13

Jags

 easy

14

Bulls

*Trad vs mad game plans Competitive

15

Sharks

*Trad vs mad game plans Competitive

16

Kings

 easy

17

Jags

 easy

Only 2 tough games although the Blues could be competitive

Stormers

Week

Opposition

 

12

Sunwolves

 easy

13

Bulls

 competitive

14

Cheetahs

 easy

15

Rebs

 easy

16

Force

 competitive

17

Kings

 easy

Only 2 tough games

 

 IMO the Boks will have to emphasize forward play but also have the capability to run the backs well. It's a matter of emphasis. 
While kiwi teams stress great ball handling by all players & a fast mobile pack Boks should stress forward dominance, field possession & defence - living off the mistakes of other teams. However, they have to be able to run the ball wide also. 

@JW because we like debating old news. Moz I hear you. I really do. But no matter how big a game or how tough the opposition. It is rugby and in rugby you have a back line. You HAVE to use it. Like I said, the Wales game tells you everything you need to know about what went wrong in the semi. Not only did the Boks play a bad game plan but there were about 5 players there that day that should have been watching the game at home. There were younger players who were not only on better form but who would have benefited massively from having one WC under their belt by the time 2019 comes around. Meyer tried to get as much experience as possible in the side so that he could "off-load" the blame onto them. The same way he did when he quit/got fired...using his family as an excuse. The guy was spineless. He had four years to build but then we he got there he suddenly tried to pull players out of retirement to get him over the line. Jaques Fourie was the only one to turn him down I think. Didn't he also try to get Bakkies back? Makes you wonder what he had been doing for those long four years. All the while telling us that the WC was his goal so we shouldn't be too concerned about the Tri Nations. The guy was a joke. I also feel that JDV did the nation a disservice by being there when he was nowhere near fit to play, and he knew it. He should have bowed out early. The game is bigger than one man, regardless of his years of loyal service and his hopes and dreams. He was a liability. That was abundantly clear.

 Plum
Forget about trying to proof anything constructive to Mozart.  He is so tied up in his hatred of certain players that he would lie to attack ones he dislikes and protect those he supports,   Take for instance the lie about the Barrett try in the WC.   He attacked De Allende as the reason why the try was scored and claimed he failed to tackle Nonu.   When challenged he posted a video clip that proved he was in fact lying.   When he was shown up by his own video clip posting he did not deny that he said De Allende failed to tackle De Allende as previously stated - but kept on insisting the try was scored because of De Allende.   Not a word about how the problem started - ie Barrett rip[ping the ball out of Burger's hands.   Not a word by Mozart on that one - matter of fact he remained quiet about that till today.  
Then there was the incident of the match-winning try scored by the Wallabies in the Perth test.   Not a word about Morne failing to find touch with a penalty kick and everyone else was blamed for poor defense - but Morne totally exonerated.   When that was pointed out to Mozart - he claimed that it was a rare occurrence - but it in fact happened 7 times in 9 tests since 2013 - so not a rare event at all.            
He also think that Meyer was a top class coach who could do nothing wrong and that Meyer made the correct picks for the WC.   Nothing you or as a matter of fact nearly everybody said would change that. 
I tried for three years now to get logic out of Mozart and has failed badly.  Dave (Saffex) also tried - but eventually he gave up as well.   I am at the end of my tether and either have to give up and let Mozart has a free hand - or keep trying to put his nonsense into perspective.   It is hard to listen to his repetitive junk and deal with it.    

 @Mike
Hehe, despite me not agreeing with Moz i do think he makes valid points. I think his views are sometimes exaggerated because he likes to play devil's advocate without letting us know.

All i know is that i am very happy with the Lions and what the have done to evolve the rugby mindset in SA. Regardless of results, they deserve tons of credit for leading by example. Especially when you consider their starting point a few years back. It's very difficult to find anything negative to say about them or to doubt their direction.

I feel that if Coetzee does fail then Ackers will be well placed to succeed him. He is still young and will only get better as time goes on. Against all odds i do have a bit of faith in Coetzee though. Mainly because i know he will ease a bit of the transformation tensions as well as probably picking a young squad, which is what we need. I don't think he is a coward and i do think that he understands where we are at as rugby nation. Only time will tell. I think we will rape Ireland in June. So there's my prediction for that.

As for the SA game. We have three clubs playing much more expansive rugby than we have seen in recent years and they are doing no worse than they did before. Logic dictates that they will get better once they are more accustomed to running the ball.
Anyone who looks at the Lions/Canes game and calls that proof that the Lions are headed in the wrong direction is totally biased. One result caused mainly by injuries that crippled the forwards is hardly to be taken very seriously. They did beat the best team in the competition...AT HOME! On top of that they, they have had some other great results this year.

Flek(spelling) has hit the ground running and the Bulls are a different team this year too. I refuse to look at their losses this season and conclude that they are moving in the wrong direction. Nothing i have seen as yet has discouraged me from believing that we don't have the skill to play a more expansive game. Quite the opposite actually.

I always wonder what Danie Gerber thinks when he hears people talking about "traditional" Bok rugby.

Oh we didn't lose the semi because Allende didn't close down Nonu leading to Barret's try and because Kaino swotted Lomp as if he was 2 metres of tissue paper on his way to another try. Those horrible failures had no bearing on the result.
Allende and Kriel were weak defensively throughout the WC, totally wrong for the defensive role required in WCs. Lomp was a big disappointment in the knockouts.

 We lost because our TEAM scored 2 points less than the best team in the world over 80 minutes! Nit picking single events from the whole match to pin-point the reason for the loss is infantile and pointless after the fact. Move on! 

If we want to start blaming individuals look no further than the so called experienced Matfield stupidly making contact with a players neck in a pathetic attempt to clear him out knowing full well we had a penalty advantage slap bang in front of the posts with 15 min to go......3 points down the tube, we lost by 2....case closed.
de Allende and Kriel were no better or worse than any other centres in the WC.....they were however better with ball in hand than most of the centres in the WC
Our best players by a country mile were our youngsters....lead by Lood and followed by Etzebeth, Malherbe, de Allende, Kriel and Pollard....the only old boy to contribute positively was Schalk.....the only disappointing youngster was Willie

Lomp was poor against Wales and the ABs. Kriel might as well have not been on the field in those two games. Pollard's line kicking was very poor, but his goal kicking was good. pollard also missed a lot of tackles vs the ABs. Allende provided no defensive structure although he made a few decent turnovers.
Not one of the youngsters were as good as the Boks they replaced or their NZ counterparts.....except for Etzebeth who is already established.

 Actually it's rather simple ...
The poor disciplined All Blacks kept the 

 Actually it's rather simple ...
The poor disciplined All Blacks kept the Boks in touch by giving penalties away ... constantly.
They out played the Boks in every department. 
The scoreline flattered the Boks.
They were never going to win that match. Not with that team of elderly hasbeens and especially not with that stubborn, ignorant coach.

According to Mozart Matfield of course was excellent.   He lost the first line-out on own throw and he caused a convertable penalty turn-around - but that should be ignored, because he had such a great reputation as a player.  Burger also was brilliant - he lost three line-outs where the ball was thrown at him and Barrett just took a ball away he was carrying in the Springboks 22 leading to an AB try - also better to ignore these facts - very convenient to blame everyone else.  
Du Preez was part of a brilliant game plan that allowed for ignoring of the backline, passing of balls to forwards  and inaccurate kicking away of the balls with resultant handover of possession to the AB's.  Fact is Mozart ignores those facts and believes that the fools on this site who mention those should be ignored.  Those according to Mozart are not recognized as facts associated with game - only the younger players - who was basically ignored i the game should be blamed.  Really baffling - but Mozart has hs own ideas about rugby and those are normally from cloud 9.

 Just watched the Highlands throw 6 offloads in 30 seconds to keep the ball alive ,its that sort of pressure that kills defenders morale and crush their spirit.And they Just scored too !

@Mike it's the soccer equivalent of throwing 11 behind the ball and claiming that your team did well as they only lost by one. Completely ignoring the fact that they had zero shots at goal.

 You are right Plum. Boks never really fired a shot in the semi with 6 from 6 penalties keeping them in touch.I don't think they got within 10 metres of the ABs line in the whole game and if they did it was only from a kick into touch.I was at that game and talked to lots of Bok supporters after. To a man they said that it would have been a travesty had the Boks won with the game they played. Crash,  bash from Schalk just didn't work and far too easily defended by the ABs.

 Moola and Plum, I wholeheartedly agree that the Boks played probably the narrowest,  most boring forward oriented rugby I witnessed in my entire life during the RWC, but if you look at the penalty count from the AB's, it was probably the only way we were going to challenge them. The AB's don't let you get close to their line and rather concede cynical penalties than tries. They only resort to this tactic when pushed close. We were aware of this and kept our game as simple as possible to avoid quick turnover tries. They are absolutely leathal on the counter from turnovers. It nearly worked for us. This was Meyer's plan for the AB's and he used all the other matches as practice for the match against our old foe. It was actually a good plan, but I hope I never see any of my favourite teams ever play like that again....never ever please!

I've thought about this long and hard.

My conclusion is that the All Blacks won because they scored more points than us.

 I think with massive talent like Jantjies, Stepfontein, Kriel, Combrink, Ulengo and Allende we could run them all to bits.....you just have to say abracadabra.

 With massive talent like the newly invented Burger at flyhalf and with the same level of talent displayed by Morne, Alberts, Matfield and a string of has-beens and never-has-beens the Springboks never had a chance to win in that game.   We should have said abracadabra before that WC semi and hope for the smallest losing margin possible.    
Mozart has a strange belief in that he thinks the performance of his favourite oldies never became poorer and by 2015 they became liabilities and not assets.  He loves to quote players like he did above - without recognizing that the players he supported played way past their sell-by date.   The real let-downs in the semi was in fact all more established players - like Burger and Matfield.   I was and still is a great admirer of Jean de Villiers, but he should after his horror injury not have made himself available for selection.  As a result he effectively also tried to play way past his sell-by date.

                   

 The oldies have just won in Europe....Frans, Jannie, Bismarck to the fore.....I wonder how the young guns are going to do in the Super playoffs, if they get there.

 Fransie did squat in the game you refer to - defense very poor - attack non-existent.  Did you actually watch the game?  The outstanding SA player was Willemse, with Jacques du Plessis not as prominent.
The shining moment in that game was when Montpellier got a turnover between their own 22 and  halfway - had a 5 on 2 overlap and kicked the ball away.  Brilliant thinking on their part.
But then this is the second level of European rugby and one would expect that international players would shine on that level.          

 Squat hey? From the match report...

 ....Australian barely five minutes to make his presence felt as he rounded off a superb move that saw him take a sublime scoring pass from centre Steyn, with Quins' defence shredded.

When did we ever see Kriel or Allende throwing a sublime pass. 

 Another take on that incident...
South African lock Paul Willemse broke a tackle and drove into midfield before being brought down. The ball was recycled quickly and the ever-alert Frans Steyn spotted a rush defence and unleashed a huge pass to Mogg, just on the pitch for injured Benjamin Fall, on the wing.

 For the rest Fat Fransie was piss-poor in defense and very very poor in attacking play.  I saw the game and those are facts  By the way there was no rush defense in that case - otherwise there would have been in intercept.
Did you watch the game at all?    

Another pack of lies.....Lood was far better than Charteris against Wales and he was better than Whitelock in the semi.....who never gained a single metre all game.
Usual prejudicial bullshit
Lood was huge in the WC........by far the best lock in the whole WC, in fact he was one of the best players of the WC in total.
His stats for a player, let alone a lock were phenomenal......you have to be pretty pathetic to refute that.
Moz you have to be the most ignorant rugby observer I have ever come across....boringly so......move on for fuck sake.
You would have to be fucking stupid to advocate Matfield over Lood...and that sums you up