Jean never laid a finger on him, nor did your man Kirchner. Morne had his hands on his shoulder at a stretch, when he ran slap bang into the arms of JJ. JJ may not have had the responsibility when the move started....but he had by far the best shot at tackling Barrett. And because his tackling technique is so pathetic, there is no other word that decribes those weak high tackles, he missed him .....ending up ignominiously on the deck. That was the end of the RC. I told you this guy's weak tackling was going to cost us....I imagined maybe a test, I never dreamed he would cost us the RC.
Mozart
With all due respect - if you look at the overall stats for the CR - you will find that Morne was bad in tackling during the whole series. He made 45 tackles in 6 matches - missing 19. That represents a miss tackle ratio of 19% - about 9 to 10% higher than what is acceptable in defence under such circumstances.
He obviously have to make more tackles due to attacks in the channel and especially so as he get very little support from the loosies of SA - the latter being easily outpaced and passed by opposition attacking players. The opposition knows that he is not a reasonably good defender and run at him more frequently and more successfully. He missed 4 tackles in the Ellis Park test - 3 of which ended up in tries being scored by the AB's. I would say two are really his bugger-ups - the 4th is the Barrett miss - where I lay only part of the blame on him and basically blame Engebrecht for a poor defensive effort.
However, it is not the only reason for a Morne disaster. Even though the Springboks were only playing with 14 men in the Eden Park test - he made bugger - up after bugger-up in the kicking game as well - especially with relieving kicks and a penalty kick where he missed the outs ide line.
If there is one player that should never play for the Springboks again - it is indeed Morne Steyn. Coaching may help JJ to improve his tackling technique - nothing will help the robotic Morne, - because he is way past the stage where coaching will improve his standard play on his part since he was a Junior. He always was the same throughout his playing career - an average to poor pivot with no ball sense and poor reading of games and consequently useless in attacking backline play. an average to poor defender - with only one asset and that is kicking at goal. However, when under stress he missed far too many of those as well (Dunedin - 80% misses, Bulls - Brumby semi this year - 50% misses, Ellis Park - 33% misses).+
