De Jongh was selected to be the number 13 in the recent tour and the question remains what he brings to the game to be thus selected. I think in reality a person must look at his stats and performances - especially this year and when he played at Springbok previously:-
Springbok Appearances
De Jongh thus far played in 15 tests (2 on the latest tour) . In those 13 appearnces he scored 1 try against the Welsh (in his first test) and 2 in a subsequent test against Namibia. The latter is a low rated team that is not really of any substance on international level.
I am going to discuss the performances in the last two tests in more detail later on. Isofar as the other tests are concerned he was average to poor and never did anything worthwhile to right home about. In the Wallaby test he came on for only 6 minutes - but in that case managed to fluff up an excellent try-scoring opportunity.
On the whole he has never shown anything that could be regarded as outstanding or even acceptable insofar as performance is concerned.
Super 15 - 2012
This year De Jongh played at 13 for the Stormers and managed to score 2 tries in the 15 games played - both in the game played afainst the Melbourne Rebels. The Stormers backline from an attacking point of view functioned badly and serious question marks as to the effectiveness of De Jongh can be asked. He normally made regular mistakes by -
* knocking on balls passed to him;
* losing balls through handover in tackle situations; and
* hanging on to balls resulting in penalties against the Stormers.
On the positive side his defence in open field play was always above board - but their remain question marks as to tackling in other situations.
All in all extremely advese performances - with more negatives than positives.
CC Performances
Even in this case there are serious question marks - in games before the final he did exactly what he did in the Super Series games - wih some ball knok-ons in evidsence and the ball handovers and penalry issues also in evidence. He was not available in certain games and what was weird was that when he was replaced by Du Plessis the Stormers backline was much more effective in attacking play than what it was when De Jongh in fact was playing for them.
Against the trend he managed to score the winning try in the CC Final - and that try was apparently the sole reason for his selection - since previous performances in both the Super Series and the CC comperirion could at best be descibed to extremely average and in some respects poor.
Performances against Scotland and England
Attacking Play
In the two trests the ball was passed to De Jongh on only six occssions - five in the Scottish test and one in the English test.
In the Scottish test - he knocked on the first ball passed to him - and i once sae he made a break beating 2 defenders and making 5 meters over the gain line - before he was tackled and a maul resulted. All the other three receivals was equally unproductive and he never even tried to off-load balls. Very non-productive on the whole.
However, I was amazed by what happened in the English test and looked a why De Jongh received the ball only once and in that case made no headway at all - despite the fact that the balls was passed often enough along the backline. I think the reasons are now clear as is evidenced by the following:-
"I watched him in the London test again tonight. I now understand why he never received the ball in passing - he has no ball sense. He constantly take up positions where the ball cannot conceivably be going. after maul situations he was on the opposite side of mauls from where the backline was forming up for attack. He is even in positions where the opposition backline would realisitically not attack. Attacks normally are not from structured play - but from mauls, etc. His absence from the attacking position nullifies attacks - even if Kirchner joint up in the line.
I also noted that when he runs back in the event where balls were kicked by the POMS in fact away from the direction the ball is kicked in. If the ball went into the Springbok 22 on the left side of the field he runs back towards the right side of the field. Cannot figure that one out as well.
There was one strange one as well - a POM player ran towards him and passed the ball before De Jongh could affect a tackle. He stretched out his hand as if he was trying to prevent the pass - but he actually was in no position to intercept or prevent a pass. The POM wing made a mess of the receipt and the ball went backwards. De Jongh saw all this two meters from where the recipient was. He did not go towards the ball to obstruct the recipient in efforts to recover the ball or to overturn possession. What happened was amazing - he ran away from the recipient towards the Springbok 22. Nobody could ever be able to convince me that there was any instinctive play or for that matter lacking ball-sense in what he was doing. In fact the issues outlied indicated he was floundering around like a headless chicken without any idea about what he was doing.
He has been in the Stormer and WP set-up for four years. If he still does not know positional play - he never would. In any event - I think we must look out for what De Jongh actually does insofar as posirional play is concerend In Sper 15 next year."
A bery poor display all round
Defence
He made 12 tackles and missed 1. That sounds great - but he is not the strongest of tacklers and allows th opposing players ample opportunities to off-load balls. Never really made a atack-stopping tackle.
Acceptable and average display
SUMMARY
De Jongh is a poor to average player on lower level and definitely not Springbok material
