One wonders at times how totally devoid of thinking some of
our members are. There are in fact two things in scoring
points between soccer and rugby. In soccer
you kick or use another part pf your body, bar your arms and hands to get the ball into the net to score points and get one point for each successful
effort .
`In the early days of the development of rugby a try was given 1 point and a conversion 3 points,
That generally changed over time to a situation where the try scored 5 points
and a conversion 2 additional points – while penalty conversions remained at
three points, So what way is the best
to win games – obviously by scoring tries and not only by kicking at goal. The latter is important – but not the beginning
and end of the game. Mozart at one stage said that 90% of the
functions of a flyhalf is to kick balls and spoke about traditional SA rugby
being the so-called 10 man game and that
is why he and AO always screamed about Morne being a top class flyhalf when his defence was putrid and the rest of
his game poor, Not taking contact and
avoiding being part of any backline attacking process was part and parcel of the Morne game - the
other being aimless kicking leading to possession handovers.
What does the above
tells us about the game of rugby? It tells
us that scoring of tries is the prime objective of the game. No amount of aimless passing and kicking in
attack without resulting in the scoring of tries is of any real consequence, Simultaneously the key is to prevent the
opposition from scoring tries. Both require
well-planned processes and initiatives.
Now lets get to Erasmus
and see where he differs from his two
predecessors and most of the coaches since re-admission. Erasmus had a plain and brilliant approach –
play the game with skill and initiatives the players understand and buy into. His predecessors all had serious deficiencies in planning and implementation and tried to
play a game laughed at by the opposition.
Even White in winning the WC was really deficient as the Springboks did
not score a single try in the WC final in 2007 – despite the fact that Jones
was on his staff.
Now lets look at the two coaches AO and Mozart praised all
along – Meyer and Coetzee, Both cached
the teams into playing stupid rugby.
After four years of aimless rugby without any real progress Meyer’s
contract with SARU was not renewed and
he was informed that he will not be appointed should he apply for the post. Two years of Coetzee was more than enough
for the country and for SA Rugby game supporters – so he was fired. Both ended up coaching NH club teams and both were fired by their clubs or being incompetent - so the obvious question is – i f they were
incompetent on club level – how would they be successful on international level?
The two members referred to are seriously deficient in
knowing the essence of the game and their denigration of Meyer and some key
players in the team is just hilariously funny.
They were wrong about Erasmus and their pet hate players for years and would
not admit their foolishness of the past.
I will stick with one description of Erasmus as
coach provided by Rob Louw when I spoke to him - : “the miracle man”.
