Springboks Venter: Boks showed great improvement in 2017

Ex Sport 24

ape Town - Former Springbok consultant Brendan Venterinsists the 2017 season was not as bad as many believe.

STATS: How Coetzee's tenure stacks up

Venter, whose official role with the team was defence and exits specialist, shared his views on Friday after it was announced that SA Rugby and Springbok head coach Allister Coetzee had parted ways.

During Coetzee’s two-year tenure, the Springboks won only 11 out of 25 Tests for a 44% win record.

Venter, however, believes the Boks showed progression in the 2017 season in which they won seven, lost four and drew two Tests.

Venter took to Twitter after hearing of Coetzee’s departure on Friday.

He said the Boks can take a lot from the lessons learnt and also called on SA Rugby to sit down with Coetzee and ask him for input on how the Springboks can be improved.

Contrary to popular belief the Boks showed great improvement last year. Won 7. Drew 2. Lost 2 by a point and lost 2 matches badly. This young Bok side was outplayed on only 2 out of 13 matches. With a bit of luck they could have won 11 out of 13.

Personally I have never believed Coetzee was up to much as a coach but has V enter a point here?

Venter says:

The point i am trying to make is that this group has real potential. Last year was not wasted. They learnt a lot and if new coaches back this group they could become world beaters.

That is the past. Usually to fiddle on that.

Now is the future, steps toward SA rugby domination over the world. Which means steps toward termination of rugby in SA.

Some excellent points Moz. I am tempted to copy and past them on the Twitter profile of twitter.com/BrendanVenter

There was a slight improvement in the 2017 iro the Springboks performances - but I would not call it a great improvement.

The improvement could have been much better and the major losses during the season reduced with smaller margins iro losses was it not the BS game plan employed as well as the seriously deficient selections.    In fact the question could be asked - was there in fact a game plan or was it a continuation of the situation under Meyer in 2015 and the BS dished up by Coetzee as Stormers coach?

I would not entirely blame Venter and Smith for the mess - it was basically Coetzee who had the major say.