Springboks current form XV . . .

Rooinek 
I suppose you are looking basically at the form in Super 15.   But I am not really all that scared about it in the case of the Springbok team.
I would play the following team for the Springboks bearing in mind the present injury situation, as well as overseas players:-
15  Willie le Roux, 14 Lwazi Mvovo. 13 Jean de Villiers, 12  Damian de Allende,  11 Brian Habana, 10  Johan Goosen,  9  Fourie du Preez, 8  Warren Whiteley,  7  Jacques du Plessis, 6 Francois Louw, 5  Flip van der Merwe,  4 Eben Etzebeth,  3  Frans Malherbe, 2  Bismarck du Plessis,  1 Tendai Mtawarire
16  Adriaan Strauss,  17 Coenie Oosthuizen, 18 Trevor Nyakane, 19  Lood de Jager, 20 Pieter-Steph du Toit, 21  Faf de Klerk, 22 Patrick Lambie, 23 Ryno Benjamin.
Worried about the injury situation. If du Toit is not available I would have Lappies Labuschagne on the bench.
Time to get rid of and forget about the plodders who have under-performed thus far this year like JP Pietersen (speed loss),  JJ Engelbrecht (form poor), Jan Serfontein (not ready yet), Francois Steyn (atrocious form - slow and very poor), Duane Vermeulen (showed very little this year), Willem Alberts (too slow for a loosie - limited capacity) and  Jannie du Plessis (atrocious form).
Players that could come in is Duane Vermeulen - but Whiteley is a better all round player and harder worker.   Reinach is perhaps a better proposition, but little Faf is really dynamite.   Heinrich Brussow and Marcel Coetzee would also be strong candidates - although the latter is very one-dimensional. 
We need a strong and more mobile pack with hard workers up front and players with vision and better playmaking in the backline.  Our loosies must also contribute to all phases of the game - not only tight 5 play.         

 unless kankowski is going overseas i would fit kankowski in their some where, and come on steyns the best player youve gt haha.

 

 
Mike ... Weren't you the one bitching about selecting codgers?

What's Du Preez doing there then?

Goosen ... come now Mike. He's not test material.

No way anyone in his right mind would select Whiteley above Vermeulen.

Poor selection, Mike .

Clean Cut
Only three pics criticized.
I would say that Goosen and Lambie are the only two flyhalfs that can think and act as players - the others have to be told before the game what they have to do and they follow that religiously without thinking - they cannot read the game.   Ask Jake White about that one - he said they kicked when they should pass the ball and run with the ball when they should kick.   Morne is so poor - his club uses him off the bench for ten minutes at a time and even then his last effort cost them a bonus point.  So he is OUT. Mind you Sias Ebersohn showed real development at the Force.
I personally do not like Fourie du Preez at scrumhalf - he slowed down in Japan (like all SA player apparently do) and is getting on in years.   He was blowing hot and cold last year in the tests - so I am not entirely convinced he is a good choice.
Whitely. Kankowski, Vermeulen - I frankly do not know.  Maybe Vermeulen - but he was coasting this year in Super 15 = not showing much and he has virtually no linking abilities with the backline.
 I do think the above would be a substantial improvement on the team of last year.          


      

 Kankowski > All

 
Substantial improvement??

No Mike, I don't agree.

Your starting 15 isn't going to do much more than get a beating. Especially with Du Plessis at 7, Whiteley at 8 and Goosen at 10.

In fact your team is awfully boring. It inspires great big yawns and I'm sure the likes of the All Blacks are chomping at the bit. 

Leave Jean at 12. That's where he belongs.

Return the incredible Alberts to 7 where he belongs with Vermeulen at 8. That's a no brainer.

Bring the likes of Brussow into the mix and go fetch Bekker from abroad to take up the 5 jersey.

Replace Fourie with Kockett and draw someone like Mapoe in to push the useless JJ out at 13. I also think the Sharks 13 deserves a mention (I forget his name now) - He produced some incredible rugby this season before his injury.

There are many putting their hands up for Bok selection and you seem to have missed them all.

Take Mvovo for example. He's come into his own at 15 and should present a serious challenge for the Bok 15 jersey. Powerful, lotsa gas, high work rate. His kicking outta hand needs a little attention but other than that he certainly has my attention. Love watching him.

The days of Habana are over. It's seriously time to move on from there.

Stop looking at the players of old and let's bring in some young blood.

 The incredible Alberts have been shown up by Treeby - an incredible landing on the arse for that one.  The bugger is useless in respect of 80% of loosie functions - talking about boring that selection is.   Maybe he will be of some use if for a change enters mauls and not moonlights behind it.


     

 1. Beast 2. Bismark 3. Oueztahazen 4. Estebeth 5. Bekker 6. Brussow 7. Du Pleesi 8. Kankowski 9. Pretorious 10. Lambie 11. Le Roux 12. Jdv 13. Sadie 14. Peterson 15. Mvovo
16. Strauss 17. Van der merwe 18. Willimse 19. Coetzee 20. Hougard 21. Gooson 22. Mapoe

Current form? You'd pick Eben Etzebeth, Coenie Oosthuizen and Andries Bekker on their current form?

Wish I was watching the rugby you're watching!

 oh is it current form still? Mikes trend seem to be directing at bigger picture xv.

The heading should give a clue but yes, you're right, I should have set ou Maaik straight as well as he also ignored the heading and gave his current Bok team.

Thing is, I give ou Maaik a bit more leeway than most because even though he has some outlandish ideas, he sometimes misses the point and he's as stubborn as a mule, he gives me a lot of laughs on this board the way he gets the vast majority of posters extremely worked up and frothing at the mouth. Just look at poor Ceradyne and Moffie! Ou Maaik plays them like puppets and they still haven't twigged!

Just to be clear, threads regarding who should be picked for the Springboks are a dime a dozen but this particular thread is concerned with who the current form players are in SA . . . and it was in response to similar thread further down discussing the current form NZ players. In both cases, the word "current" is the key!

 Mozart
9 years later - and you still want some of the above way past it players quoted by you in the Springbok team.  The same applies to the 2007 WC team - they went to New Zealand for the 2011 WC and bombed out early.
Time to say fare thee well to the geriatrics - sad to say.     

But the good news is...I never picked Luke Watson...not even for the Stormers bench!  

Form Boks

1 d greyling, 2 bizzy, 3 wrener kruger

4 lood de jager, 5 viktor matfield

6 marcel cotezee, 8 warren whittley, 7 jacques du plessis

9 sarel prstorius, 10 japcques potgieter

12 damien de allende, 13 johan sadie,

11 willie le roux, 15 lawazi mvovo, 14 cornell hendricks

16 adriaan strauss, 17 beast, 18 frans malherbe, 19 francois uys, 20 philip van der walt, 21 faf de klerk, 22 sias ebherson, 23 stefan watrmeyer

Sushi often wrong, never uncertain. How's life in the granola commune?

 Ou rooitwit wants matfield and Uys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bwahahahaahahhahahahahaha Marcell Coetzee is also like wee matfield a one dimensional player. 
Otherwise not too bad rooitwit keep trying.

If I was selecting a Bok side now, it would be:

15. Willie 14. JP 13. JJ 12. Serfontein 11. de Allende 10. Goosen 9. Hougaard 1. Beast 2. Bismark (c) 3. Coenie 4. Flip 5. du Plessis 6. Brussouw 7. Coetzee 8. Vermeulen
16. Strauss 17. Kitshoff 18. Malherbe 19. Willemse 20. Kolisi 21. de Klerk 22. Frans 23. Taute

We know Dave....Stepfontein and JJ....got it.  

Beats the hell out of Jean and de Jongh......or for good measure Fourie combo........imagine a Kiwi or Oz selector making that kind of call, its much like selecting Morne at 10.......your calls are the kind of calls I would expect from an England selector.........its those calls that see a big positive in having Matfield and Bakkies back in the Bok fold...........you will be smiling come Meyers selection in a few weeks time!!

My call is that Oz will get the better of us this RC.......for Meyers conservatism will prevail ......he got the taste with his pathetic EOYT selections

Well Dave I'm all for running rugby. When I went and stood at the Railway stand at Newlands Gainsford, Stewart Hopwood, Dawie de Villiers, Vos, Engelbrecht, BP van Zyl,  H.O and Gert Muller were the men. WP used to run from anywhere when behind.
But the game has changed somewhat.  And we have very few players fit to make that list...Willie, Habana, Jean....nobody else I can see.
So we need a different approach. Certainlly more than just Bools tactics, but a more controlled game than Oz or NZ plays. All that starts  at flyhalf. I wish I could believe Goosen could be that change agent. But that player will have to be bigger than life, lion hearted. I don't think Goosen can be that big....even for the Cheetahs. That role is reserved for Willie, a player who as Blikkies suggested, should probably have been switched to flyhalf.
The only other non kicking option I see is Frans, who could certainly be a better Butch...but once again, we have not pursued this course.

Mozart
Sorry - the game has not changed - we have gone backwards in playing rugby.   Our backline players became obsolete when Naas Botha came on board and it went backwards afterwards till we reached the Morne Steyn era.
The result is that we now have  backline  players totally incapable of reading the game -  running straight at first defenders  -  with putrid ball handling skills - who does not know when to pass balls and when to kick - whose kicks are aimless and ineffective.
There are minor exceptions - but the above describe the standard backline players in virtually all franchises.  Yet you favour flyhalfs like Morne and Francois Steyn to initiate a "more controlled game".   This game must be  " more than just Bools tactics",  but how the hell do you think a more controlled game could be iniititated by players who failed miserably in reading the game and who in most respects lack the skills to bring off anything other than aimless kicking and hospital passes = a player like Francois Steyn - who without directly naming him White criticized for kicking balls away he should pass and pass balls he should kick 
Lets look at the backline players = other than the Steyns.  You favour -
*   Fourie at center - a player with the speed of a carthorse and zero attacking ability;*   Juan de Jongh - who do not know when to pass and when to keep possession of the ball.
Saffex favours Engelbrecht with the same level of imperfections than the two mentioned.  
What will happen if the ball by accident  is passed along the backline - one of them is sure to make a bad pass and there will be knock-ons.   In the meantime the defense of most players are putrid.  If they bring off something to off-set that - like Willie does - fine.  But the defense and general play of for instance Francois Steyn is piss-poor.  
Sorry - if we want to have a winning chance we cannot go into games with a seriously deficient backline with players who are mostly devoid of any skills and the basic requirements for backline players.  We need players  with at least a reasonable level of ability to read games and with sufficient ball skills to bring it off.  
It is time to forget about slow donkeys like the Steyns, Fourie and JP Pietersen and start playing backline players with the necessary skills.  There are players like that - but you ignore their existence.
Incidentally the further problem is that you want to see a team comprising a Tight 7 combination  with two loosies actually doing nothing to the game in respect of 80% of standard loosie play and supposedly do extra work in tight 5 functions.  That further destroy the  backline play - if an SA  backline player is tackled - the so-called loosies are so far away there is no ball protection and recovery.  If an opposition player is tackled - by the time they reached the tackle point, the ball is  already with the next tackle spot.  None of the so-called loosies has any ball skills and they cannot pass balls as well.
That is the tragedy =  we want to play rugby with 7 tight 5 players = a defective flyhalf with no ball skills and reading of the game and we want to say that is the answer to all rugby matters in SA.   That is the load of rubbish that our present scenario is in SA Rugby.                              
       

Crap we have plenty of attacking players with great attacking skills.......the majority of our backs have all the skills needed to make an impact on attack.......the issue is that our conservative coaches do not encourage this style of play.

I am not advocating an all out attack approach but SA sides need to strike a balance where attack equates the bash approach. We should be playing to our strengths by imposing ourselves physically and running it, instead of playing for position all the time......ie kicking the shit out of the ball all the time

Saffex
Sorry to disagree - but the ball skills of most of our senior players are worse than what I saw on the Wildeklawer school competition this week.  Their passing game  is inaccurate and causes way too many possession turnovers and their ball catching is too often poor. 
Furthermore - they kick the shit our of the ball because they cannot read games properly - White himself said that in the game on Saturday they kicked balls they should have passed and they pass balls they should have kicked.  They make skip passes and eliminate overlaps - they cannot see overlap situations and they run straight at defenders and kill potential attacks through not passing balls.  
What I wrote above is not my own comment - but a summary of what is being said  it is  a summary about people like Mallett, Skinstad and even Naas Botha.  The issue of ball protection in tackle situations have been with us for a while now and is largely due to our slow loose forwards incapable of doing ball protection and recovery and can on average  not pass balls to save their lives.
The other problem is the issue with the speed of some backline players in Super 15. For instance - playing in Japan Pietersen lost a lot of pace, Fourie has the pace of a slow carthorse and Francois Steyn has completely lost his pace.    
Where I agree with you is that the problem is largely the fault of the coaches.  They do not concentrate on attacking backline play and the silliness is illustrated by for instance Matfield being the attack coach of the Bulls.  As such most of the players know nearly nothing about running supporting and attacking lines.  The Cheetahs have some very average players in their backline - though their ball skills and performances on attack is way ahead of anything else in SA and is clear for all to see.  My question always is - where would  Willie le Roux have been if he was playing for the Bulls?   Probably in France - because the Bulls would never have been able to appreciate his qualities. 
People talk negatively about Serfontein and Engelbrecht - if they have had the coaching by the  Cheetahs coaching staff they would be on top of the world rankings of centers - where they are at present they are sabotaged out of their careers by incompetent coaching.        
Mozart does not agree about the need to vary play - for him their is one game plan and that is a ten man rugby game plan.   Unfortunately some of our coaches (Meyer included) share that philosophy and that really damage our performances since players are not properly coached in anything else.   
       

Disagree 100%, our players do have the skills, we see glimpses of it all the time.......the issue is that our players are not encouraged to employ their attacking skills.......they are bound by conservative gameplans.......something we never see from the Oz and Kiwi sides.

If Serfontein played for the Brumbies, he would thrive.......and no, the Brumbies coaches would not have to coach him, they would just encourage him to express himself

Saying our players do not have the skills is insulting and naive.......you do not play at the highest level without skills

If they have the skills - they do not show them.  Take for instance Steyn 0 he had thus far had 25 ball possession losses in 8 games and that does nto include inaccurate passes knocked in by recipients.
I am not saying the players - or at least most of them - does not have natural ball skills - but the coaches are doing their damnedest to coach it out of them.   The issue of running lines is something they can only develop through coaching and that coaching is absent.
I do not insult the players - I insult the dumbos who are supposed to refine skills to a higher level.         

Read what I said, they dont show the skills for they are not encouraged to attack - other than the Cheetahs.
Saying Frans lacks skills is not only insulting it also tells me you are very naive.
Its much like saying coaches should still be refining the basic rugby skills of top flight rugby players - geez Mike if you think that that is really what coaches do or that top rugby players require that kind of coaching, you are even more ignorant than I originally thought.

 Saffex
The basic skillset is not enough.  It is not only encouragement that is missing,   But most of all it is deficient application.   Steyn is a typical example.  His main problem may not be skills deficiency - it is two-fold namely his lack of speed and his poor decision making.   How come he is the only SA franchise center who has never made a line break this year - how come he has the worst possession handovers record  of SA backline players?
He was a skills player at one stage - at this stage it is missing.   It is not an insult - it is a fact.  He is at this stage a worse backline destroyer than Morne was and that indicates how really bad he is.