Mozart
Time to get the matter into perspective. You blame every present Tighthead for being insufficient – but the real situation is that every Tighthead since 2012 were deficient - none was worse than your “national treasure” was. That is if the Tighthead is singled out – like you did – as the only problem in regard to scrumming.
Your record in dealing with the issue is not spotless. In the Aussie game last year Van der Merwe was the loosehead and Strauss the hooker. The scrum went down on the loosehead side and the hooker was also down - but you blamed the Tighthead for the collapse.
When I looked at all games Strauss played in since 2012 for all teams he played in, it became clear that scrumming became a detrimental problem whenever he was in the team. I was taken apart by some of the members on this site, since according to you and others – inclusive of your supporter Dofdoos – there was not any merit in that observation of mine. However, when a player who played against Strauss said the same – you first tried to cover up the issue by quoting a newspaper report – and then made a mild admission that the Force player may be correct in what he said.
It is not only Strauss that is weak in scrumming – the Stormers scrum was by some distance the best scrum in Super Rugby when Liebenberg was the hooker and Malherbe and Kitshoff were the props. The moment Fourie came in as hooker – the scrumming deteriorated badly. The same applies to Mbonambe and Ntubene – both cannot contribute to scrumming to save their lives.
As long as you fail to realize that the front row is a unit and the Tighthead has an equal role to the loosehead and the hooker in that unit – the blaming of the Tighthead only is irrelevant. If anyone in that unit is weak – it is detrimental to the other two players because of scrumming inadequacy . In this case the weakness is clear – just look at all games on Super Rugby and in tests in which Strauss played and the deterioration is evident. With him as hooker the scrumming will always be a problem.
You may not like this because of the fact that you dislike some plaers and always carry on about how poor they are – and the real issue is consequently best ignored –but what I wrote is facual and I stay with my assessment.
