The Stormers won today but had to rely on the forwards to clench the win at the death with "another" rolling maul.
Some of the forwards had better touches with the ball in hand than the sterile backs.
Scarbari at hooker was great for the Stormers today, with that back flip pass showing better enterprise and skill than the backs. Firstly by drawing his opposing number running to the right and then passing with a backflip pass to the left after creaing the space for his supporting runner to take the gap. He had presense of mind and space to be creative, and not just run straight with horse blinkers on.
WTF is going on with backline play in South Africa.
Are the backline players trained to pass the ball, even a basic game like hot potatoe or touch rugby would be better than just spending the whole day in gym.
Watching the Rebels today against the Cheetas- they had some very enterprising backline moves, with pin point perfection long passes.
Willie Le Roux showed some good passing skills, as did Goosen but for the rest it was mostly crash and bash blinker stuff with players often isolating themselves instead varying their running lines looking for support runners to pass to.
It is common sense- if the backline players stand far apart and run at varied angles either flat or from deep, it is going to be difficult to defend against.
More space means more gaps to cut the backline of the opposition defenders who will align themselves with their opposite numbers from set piece moves.
If the best New Zealand coach was to take over a SuperXV South African backline, he would struggle with implementing an expansive backline game plan because most of the players just cant do accurate long passes when running at speed.
Fortunately for the driving maul. Maybe SA teams should just play fast loose forwards in most of the backline positions given that most of the backline just runs straight which will typically result in a crash ball or late hospital pass.
