Got AI to help me clean up this post...
Was listening to some LRP yesterday and a few interesting points were raised.
The most interesting was the suggestion that the Bok pack appears to have a higher-than-usual emphasis on dynamism and mobility.
As a side note, Pieter Steph Du Toit P Divvy(EDIT for some reason AI thought I was talking about PSDT) is apparently the fittest player in the Bok squad. That's quite a feather in your cap when you play the game he does. A fetcher with an enormous engine is a massive asset.
Looking through the current pack, there certainly seems to be more emphasis on mobility than we've traditionally associated with the Boks. And if that's the case, what does it mean for the Bomb Squad? Could the idea be to use the starting pack to bludgeon the opposition up front before bringing on a bench that combines both power and mobility to finish games at a higher tempo?
It may be a necessary adaptation because, whether we want to admit it or not, the scrum has been depowered.
Watching the URC quarter-finals, semi-finals and final, it was hard to ignore what appeared to be a recurring trend. When the South African sides had the put-in, there suddenly seemed to be stability issues, early engagements, resets and collapses, often resulting in free kicks rather than penalties. Yet when the opposition had the put-in, scrums frequently looked rock solid and were set with far fewer problems.
Whether that perception is entirely fair is open to debate, but it certainly feels as though teams have learnt that conceding a free kick is far preferable to risking a penalty. If that's the direction the game is going, then one of rugby's traditional cornerstones has undeniably lost some of its bite. Personally, I'd like to see the law return to what it was. If you can't scrum legally, you should be penalised. There shouldn't be a mechanism whereby teams can intentionally engineer a lesser sanction to avoid a greater one.
LRP's view was that Rassie has recognised this and is adapting accordingly. If scrums aren't going to provide the same dominance they once did, then there is greater value in keeping the ball alive, avoiding unnecessary rucks and increasing the tempo. A more mobile pack allows the Boks to do exactly that while still retaining plenty of physicality.
Now I'll play devil's advocate...
In my opinion, last year's French test was peak Bok rugby. Even playing with fourteen men for most of the match, the Boks physically wore France down before Williams and Sacha exploited the space late in the game to put the result beyond doubt. It felt like the perfect marriage of traditional Bok power and world-class finishing ability.
So here's the question...
If we now finally have a backline capable of fully exploiting the momentum generated during the first 50 minutes, do we really need another significant tactical evolution? Or is the answer simply to keep refining what already works?
After all, when a knife is as sharp as it's ever been, do you really need to keep sharpening it?
Every great side has to evolve, but once you've reached the summit, perhaps evolution should become refinement rather than reinvention. Perhaps this is simply refinement and I'm making something out of nothing...
Well, one has to post about something hahaha