I asked Chat to help me clean up my rant. Yesterday's game, and selections, ticked me off even more than the loss last week. Yeas I know that JL was mean to play.m yesterday....
So, for the sixth time this year, we field a team that looks nothing like the one from the week before.
And then people complain about Snyman, Mostert, and Marx having ordinary games. How many starts have Snyman and Mostert actually had in 2025? Not many. Marx has been shuffled into a different pack every single week. That’s not poor form, that’s the inevitable result of zero cohesion.
We’ve gone from a back row of Taitsuka, Marco, and Jasper to Mostert, Marco, and Kwagga. Rassie seems allergic to picking his best pack and sticking with it. Instead, it’s musical chairs rugby, week after week. And the performances look exactly like that.
But somehow, the blame falls on the players. As if world-class operators like Marx, RG, and Mostert have suddenly become ordinary.
The backs are handled no better.
– Sacha, apparently a winger now. His first Test minutes of the year are ten minutes out of position, and naturally he still makes something happen.
– Manie starts, does what Manie always does, and Sacha’s reward is a waterboy shift until the 70th.
– Vd Berg looks sharp in his outings, offers a genuine alternative to the Williams style, and is ignored for Reinach, who is closer to 40 than 30.
– AE, the only back who actually stood up last week, is insulted by being shoved onto the flank. Supposedly because of an eighthman shortage. But if Roos is in the standby squad, why are you playing a back out of position instead of picking him? And what about Tsitsuka?
At hooker, Marnus gets ten minutes all season while Bongi stumbles along. Everyone has seen that Bongi is well past his best, but the coach apparently figured it out only this week. So in a must-win game, Marnus gets a token cameo.
Lock pairing? Hansen never refused to start Whitelock and Retallick together. Yet Rassie continues to keep RG and Eben apart, for reasons known only to him.
And then there’s Willemse, a double World Cup winner and part of the backbone of this team’s rise, left out entirely while Sacha is asked to learn wing on the job.
What we’re left with is simple: talent papering over coaching chaos.
This constant chopping and changing creates an environment of uncertainty. Players can’t build confidence without assurance of selection. The talk about “competing for jerseys” is nonsense.
Here’s the truth:
– First-choice players should know they are backed. They play with confidence because of that certainty.
– Second-choice players should know they are next in line, and that when the opportunity comes, they’ll get a proper run.
That’s how you build confidence. That’s how you build cohesion.
Instead, players are forced into ten-minute windows to prove themselves, playing under pressure that every mistake could cost them their place. That isn’t coaching, it’s sabotage.
A real coach doesn’t shuffle talent like trading cards. A real coach gives his players clarity, backs them, and lets class grow into cohesion.
Right now, Rassie isn’t backing his players. He’s breaking them