The thin player info

Matfield leading the Springboks on the field....Stephanie moonlighting in the doctor's office. Spot the difference. 

 I would rather have a half-fit Du Toit than a useless loafer - trying to avoid contact so as not to get injured - on the field of play.   Leaders should also set an example by contributing - the example set by Matfield is zero.    

"Half fit"..... hahahahaha.......I think we would all settle for half fit, that would imply he actually plays vs talks to reporters about his WC plans. 

With Matfield leading the Boks will be losing.......watch this space. What will your excuse be come Sunday......Matfield saving himself for the WC?  

So Dave does "the Boks will be losing" mean the same things as "if I was a betting man I would not be picking the Springboks".....huh?

This game could really go either way. I feel we have the better team, but only just, and they have home ground advantage. It is a 50/50 toss up, but I'd have to go with the home side. Who else is prepared to make a prediction?

 Bluebok
For the Springboks to win they need to dominate up front and I am afraid that domination would not be possible with Matfield and Jannie du Plessis in the Tight 5.  
The Wallabies has very good loosies - depending on who they select.  I would think it may be Poc ock, Hooper and I would say McMahon (that youngster from the Rebels).  These three would be all over the slow service Pienaar and that could be a serious problem as well.
In the backline the Springboks have very good players - but they need good ball and that is where the problem lies.  I think that at least two backline players are sub-par - Pienaar and JP Pietersen.  
My own feeling is that the Springbok Tight 5 is not strong enough and their loosies will struggle.   The scrummie is not good enough - and Kriel is inexperienced.   I liked what I saw of him last Saturday and he and De Allende may cause problems for the Aussies.   
Based on the above - my guess is that the Aussies will beat us by circa 12 points.   It may be more if our Tight 5 disintegrate - which is quite possible.    

If we have a problem it will be at loosie...a non specialist 8th man, a non specialist 7 in Coetzee and Louw who has missed some test rugby.

 Did we not win our first RWC with a lock playing at 8? I agree though,  big gambles rarely pay off in big games and Suncorp is as big as it gets against Oz. 

Dont get me wrong...I still feel Schalk is the best option this we ekend....but I would  much rather Schalk was at 7 with a fit Vermeulen at 8. Losing Thor is a worst case scenario.

 The biggest problem in the side is Matfield at 5 and Pienaar at 9.....followed by Louw at 6.

 The problem is not necessarily the loosies - but unlike Mozart says the players I identified as the weak links.   I think that Pienaar was poor on Saturday - so poor that if it was Reinach who missed Burden twice - Mozart would have written 50 pages about it condemning him as player.   Because it was Pienaar he kept dead quiet about it.   The other issue that made me wonder about Pienaar is his slowish service - although accurate he was that second too slow - leaving him extremely vulnerable and putting pressure on Pollard or for that matter any flyhalf in the Springbok side.   Players like Hooper and Poc ock will ahve a field day against him.  
Louw was good in the past - but not at all acceptable on Saturday.   He was totally ineffective at breakdowns and it worries me that he is more of a NH 7 than a SH opensider.   I have had no problem at all with Coetzee and Burger - even though Burger is not good at ballm protection and recovery either.  So we are ending up with only one loosie that holds his own in that Department - Coetzee.   That remains a problem. 
As top the lock and line-out situation I am not at all happy with what I saw on Saturday and if it was not a repeat of what happened during the past Super 15 I would not have been as upset as I was after the match.  Matfield does not call line outs to come to him   When facing a strong lock at 5 - he never calls line-outs to come to him in the middle of the line-outs.  On Saturday he called line-outs to go to either Etzebeth or Whiteley - and there is no Whiteley in the team this week.  Similar to what he did in the Bulls - Sharks game - where he took two line-outs, he was not in the middle of the line-outs he took - but moved to the front - where he took both, one on opposition throw and one on own throw.  That effectively was his only way of taking line-out balls this year in Super 15.   He does not have the luxury of of having Whiteley on Saturday and we will have a problem in line-out play.   However, the main problem with Matfield remains the fact that without grunt he is no good in the tighter phases of the game.  With Jannie deficient in scrumming and a serious case of ill-discipline I am not having any faith in out Tight 5.  The other three cannot make up for the deficiencies of the named two.
Mozart does not want to see how poor in pace Pietersen is and his contribution on Saturday was typical - he was putrid and in defense he will come short - while in attacking play he is useless.   
Those deficiencies are where the Springboks are going to suffer on Saturday and those are the players who are going to cost us the game.
However if as expected we lose the game, some members of this site will inevitably lay the blame at the door of players like Coetzee, De Allende and Kriel - while the real culprits will be kept quiet about.                 

 Louw needs some time on the field. He is a bit rusty. He will be fine and if Marcell can build on last week's game, he will be more than fine as well. It looks like a bit of Schalk rubbed off on him. First time he really looked at home in the Bok jearsy. Previously, for me, there was always something missing in his game. I expect him to really step it up this year.
GO BOKKE!

 "With Matfield leading the Boks will be losing......."

@Saffex. That implies that you are saying that Matfield's captaincy is the reason why we will lose.
Span  Mat  Start  Sub  Pts  Tries  Conv  Pens  Drop  Won  Lost  Draw  %    unfiltered  2001-2014  121 116 5 35 7 0 0 0 76 43 2 63.63 filtered  2007-2014  20 20 0 5 1 0 0 0 15 5 0 75 Unfiltered = All tests
Filtered = Tests as captain



"I think that Pienaar was poor on Saturday - so poor that if it was Reinach who missed Burden twice - Mozart would have written 50 pages about it condemning him as player."

I have never been a fan of Pienaar, but I beg to diffrer. Pienaar had a good game on Saturday. There was not  much that he could have been faulted on.

 Ceradyne
Are you really sure that a scrummie who stood looking at a ball coming out of scrums and mauls - before picking up the ball is not putting his flyhalf under pressure.    It happened constantly and his service was just a second or two too slow to be effective.  The Burden issue was a real negative and I believe Pienaar was not at all adequate.The Springbok backline was m uch more effective in attacking play when Reinach came on.
We are going to suffer this weekend in Brisbane and one of the main reasons would be Pienaar.  

 "Are you really sure that a scrummie who stood looking at a ball coming out of scrums and mauls - before picking up the ball is not putting his flyhalf under pressure.  "

I am being serious. What you describe is RP's normal play and what has always p!ssed me off about him. On Saturday, that was not what he was doing. He might have done it on the odd occasion, which each and every scrumhalf does from time to time, but on this occasion, RP's cleaning out behind the scrums were mostly quick and clean.


"No just with useless Matfield in the side we will lose, the fact that he is captain makes things that worse."

Bulltwang. His stats as a test captain prove you wrong. He has a 75% success rate. John Smit's success rate as a captain was 65.66%.
Jean de Villiers' success rate as a test captain is 70.58%

 Ceradyne
Pienaar did exactly that - not on a few occasions either.  Take for instance that try of Burden - he did not follow the ball - stand around gaping at it in front of the line-out.
Matfield's problem is not his captaincy - it is his deficient performance as a lock.   His captaincy is not adequate - as his performing as a lock is inadequate.   Mozart, Desert Disaster and you refuse to recognize his deficiencies as a Tight 5 player - he is totally without grunt - trying to hide away in line-outs - deficient in scrumming and breakdown ball situations - and prefer to moonlight in the backline.   He is destroying our forward dominance and has shown that in the tests last year and Super 15 as well.  A captain should not be selected before he is a certainty for the position he plays in and despite Meyer's "love affair" with him, he is inadequate.   

Do I detecting a hint of one-incident critique there? As I have said, I am no fan of Pienaar but your remarks about his play in general, on the weekend, is inaccurate and unfair. I am not even going to say a thing on Matfield. Your arguments about him are repetitive, out of context and boring. There a re a number of well-known factors that make him valuable in the team at the moment. My gut-feeling is that deep-down you know that but you are too much of a coward to acknowledge it. The arguments have been discussed ad nauseam and nothing is going to change.

 Pienaar was not good enough on Saturday - FACT.  Hooper and Poc ock will make mincemeat of him on Saturday - mark my words.  What I wrote is not inaccurate - nor unfair - it is accurate and to the point.
What I said about Matfield is a summary of what ex-locks said about him and the reasons are in line with what they said about why he should not be in the WC squad.  Those statements are factual.  What Mozart, Desert Disaster and you write about Matfield is even more repetative without any present proof.   All your arguments is what Matfield was like in the 2007 WC and up to 2009.   By 2011 he showed nothing of his good attributes of the past and by now it has been gone for far too long.  He is not a shadow of the player he was in 2009 and you keep making it out that it is still 2009 - not 2015.   Living in the past is dangerous since performance is a requirement and that in the case of Matfield is absent.   It all is based on a theory - nothing on present fact.      

 There is another clown who, just like you, loves to be very reckless with the term "FACT" and who also loves to end a statement with "FACT". Someone once klapped him six love with this remark:

"The only FACT regarding your statement is that it is in FACT an OPINION. An OPINION that is disproved by the FACTS. The FACT that something is YOUR OPINION does not make it a FACT, even if you say that it is a FACT in capital letters. Even if you truly believe it to be FACT, there are others that disagree with that OPINION and while both OPINIONS may be either right or wrong, they remain merely OPINIONS, until they are proven either correct or wrong.

A FACT is something that has really occurred or is actually the case. The usual test for a statement of FACT is verifiability, that is whether it can be proven to correspond to experience. The FACT that your OPINION is in actual FACT the exact opposite of the verifiable experience (FACT), therefore proves that your OPINION is in FACT not FACT..."

Ceradyne
You quoted the following and I agree with it:- 
"A FACT is something that has really occurred or is actually the case. The usual test for a statement of FACT is verifiability,"

That is the exact problem - what I stated as facts are indeed verifiable and shown up in 2014 and 2015 matches on a regular basis.   What you lot wrote and then want others to believe is nothing of the sort.   You want people to believe that Matfield is still the same player he was in 2007 and all your praise-singing is based on that.   When present examples are quoted you keep up the same story about what he was in 2007.   That is verifiable fact as pertains to 2007 - but it is not verifiable fact of what the position is at present.   When things are pointed out to you about the present scenario - you run back to the verifiable scenario iro of 2007 - with all kind of praise-singing which totally ignore the present situation.  
That is what makes your present statements such a joke.      

 Which part of "THIS game" have you missed?

 The game on Saturday - or which game are you referring to?

 The f'king game on Saturday you f'king clown. The one against the World XV at Newlands on Saturday 12 July 2015. Got it? I have referred to the game on Saturday twice and still you are confused. Geez......

I have actually responded to a remark that you made  about the particular game, FFS.

The first one:

"I think that Pienaar was poor on Saturday - so poor that if it was Reinach who missed Burden twice - Mozart would have written 50 pages about it condemning him as player." [Your words]

I have never been a fan of Pienaar, but I beg to diffrer. Pienaar had a good game on Saturday. There was not  much that he could have been faulted on.

Second one:
"As I have said, I am no fan of Pienaar but your remarks about his play in general, on the weekend, is inaccurate and unfair."

 Now lets get this straight - did -
*   Pienaar not stand looking when Burfen picked up the ball from the maul and ran straight past him while he looked on doing nothing?
*   Pienaar nor fail to follow the ball and stood dead still when Whiteley took the line-out throw-in by the World 15 and allowed an opening for Burden to take a ball he should have collected before Burden scored a try?
*   Pienaar not stand looking at the ball before he picked it up the ball - especially when the Springboks were attacking near the World 15 line - allowing the opposition to line up their defense which happened at least three times before Le Roux scored his try?
Those are not lies - the silence of Mozart makes him a hypocrite - a guy who would have crucified Reinach if that happened when he was playing.  That is what make you two the most dishonest members whose prejudice is more important than objectivity on this site.   

If I had the time and patience of DF, I would have edited the download that I have of the game but I just couldn't give a sh!t. Let me remind you again....... I am no fan of Pienaar. Never have been but on the game on Saturday, there was not a lot that one can fault him on. He had everything, that those who wished him to fail dismally, against him. Those who were shouting out the reasons why he would fail where on about how he hasn't played for months, has been playing in a "p!iss-poor" NH competition, hasn't played Super Rugby in ages, etc, etc, etc. Despite all of that, he did not do nearly as bad as all of you clowns predicted.
And that, is the crux of the matter. The fact that he actually did quite well. My main issue with him has always been how slow he was too clean up behind the rucks. I was surprised, on Saturday, to see how quick he was to do that. On the odd occasion that he had to look up to see where he was going to pass mostly the exception, rather than the rule. I cannot really remember him standing at the back  of the ruck and doing his usual meerkat act of  looking around and waving his arms like a  traffic cop.

 Ceradyne
Before the game I said that I do not like his selection and that is no secret.  To my mind he did not do the normal act of him and Du Preez - that is to wave at players before he picked up the ball and pass it - allowing defenders to fan out too.   However, for me his worst failures pertained to the Burden incidents and the fact that he made serious errors in those two cases.   
Since his forwards will not have the upper hand and the balls he get will be slow  I think that against stronger opposition and better loosies Pienaar will fail - and that is where the sh!t will hit the fan.    

 So, after all of this you still cannot come up with much more than the miss on Burden. I will have a look at the incident again but IMO, you are once again making a mountain out of a molehill to protect your prejudice. You can just never bring yourself to admit when one of your pet-hates has done well, can you?

 Ceradyne
You dunce it - Pienaar's bugger-ups involved two incidents.  However, reminds me of another incident where De Allende was blamed for missing a tackle on Kuridrani after - according to Mozart he "was lined up" to  defend against the said player.  This was an outright lie.  De Jongh was lined up to defend against Kuridrani and then opted out leaving De  Allende to endeavour to clear up the mess.   When that was not successful De Allende was crucified and the lie persisted when Mozart claimed that Kuridrani after the failed tackle took off and gained territory, while in fact as a result of the attempted tackle Kuridrani  lost ball possession and a scrum a few meters further followed.
So go on and find another weird excuses for Pienaar's foul-ups and avoid the lies and dishonesty prevalent in the Kuridrani case.  That I believe is an impossibility and Mozart are avoiding like the plague the statement I made about what he would have written if Reinach was on the field of play and it was not Pienaar.  
When it comes to favoured players dishonesty reigns supreme on this site and all kind of excuses are found to cover up foul-ups by favoured players and attack all others. .  
      

 Snapster matfiled is 105 kg at present. Please get his weight correct for once - you always over inflate ou matfiled like his delusional groupies do. He is 2 kg heavier than Brussouw and 1 kg lighter than Whitely. 
He is the weakest lock ever to play for SA, to play Super rugby, to play currie cup rugby and if he played Vodacom rugby the weakest there as well. He is pathetic as a lock and no other word adequately describes it. He has been a complete and utter disaster for us from day one and NEVER was a good lock. Would that the show pony would retire! What would we have achievied playing two real locks oveer the last decade of the matfiled debacle!!!!!!!! What a con artist!!! Even the good Dr Mozzz has been completley fooled.The best remedy for the delusion is to watch matfield closely a whole match. Now he is 38 years old and still with us. The mind boggles at the rank stupidity!!!
Cerudunce slagger windpomp would you mind trying to be a bit more civil and less foul mouthed. This isnt kamp ss!!!  Thanks
Pienaar is pedestrian these days. Meyer should be packing in the test experience with Reinach. Unfortunatley Faf is injured I hear otherwise he should get a shot off the ebnch. Man can he change the tempo of the game. I suspect Meyer wants a tactical kicking flyhalf to supplement Pollard. Fact is though we know exactly what we have in Pienaar. Now is the last opportunity to bring the young guns through before RWC time. (No silly comments again windpomp re facts!)
Louw's work rate was a little on the low side but Burger was superb at 8 and marcell excelled at 7. I dont think that we will have a problem in the loose trio. We need more clout in the tight five. A real lock to partner Eben and I think Malherbe needs to come on as early as possible. I would have started with Malherbe and had Koch on the bench. So what if we loose these tests. I think in any event the young guys will impress. Plenty of go in them. Meyer clings on to Beast and Jannie and fails to develop his young props. He is a slow coach. Twigs far to slowly.

 "Cerudunce slagger windpomp would you mind trying to be a bit more civil and less foul mouthed. This isnt kamp ss!!!  Thanks"

And who made you the forum sheriff?

 By popular acclaim windpomp!!! Behave yourself and up your game! Bwahahahhahahahaha

 Ceradyne
Somebody must try and set the dishonest and prejudiced right on this site.  Beeno is correct in this case.   Get your house in order amf it will not happen.     

 One has to put the professional sh  it stirrer in his place Mike otherwise it will be all downhill!  

Hey windpomp give my regards to barlee, wee jamesie huntie and the girls - tai pansy etc!I would do so myself but they would be in tears in an instant.  
Thanks