What a difference one player makes . . .

Rugby is a team sport but one player can make a massive difference as we've seen this year. 

The Springboks with Pieter-Steph du Toit in the side and the Springboks without him are almost two different teams. Gone is the passion, the drive and the work ethic and it's replaced with a sterile and apathetic shambles.

I know we have some rugby noobs on this forum like Omlett and Omellete who still believe that the World Rugby Player of the Year and Player of the 2019 RWC is a useless passenger, but these are the same gullible fools who worship at the shrine of their idol Eben Etzebeth and can't speak his name without clutching at their thin little gherkins and including the words "best in the world". 

Here's a question, how come Etzebeth always gets a pass when he plods around the field a few metres off the pace for the entire game, making high tackles, giving away penalties and making zero impact? We always hear loud shrieking from the egg magnets when someone like Lood de Jager or Damian de Allende makes a mistake but Etzebeth seems to get a free pass. What does PSdT have to do to get credit and what does Etzebeth have to do to get criticism? I can count on one hand the number of times Etzebeth has outplayed PSdT in a game yet listening to some of the biased and silly little chumps on this forum, you'd swear it was the other way around.

Anyway, I'm not for one second suggesting Pieter-Steph will solve all our problems . . . we need some backs (and a coach) with imagination and flair . . . but he will definitely bring a lot of energy back to the team.

Nienaber? Hard to blame Rassie's puppet when he's never been given the reins. We all know who is pulling the strings and making the calls. Don't blame the physio.

"You take the lead singer out of the band and you are left with no band"

Pink Floyd did okay without Syd Barrett . . .

Dave I think rooitwit has done so well with his post. Sure he was dead wrong about Eben but at least he got it right about PSDT! 

Its a red letter day when rooiTWIT gets anything right. Rooitwit has always disliked Eben who plays it too rough for his tatstes. Hence rooitwit preferred the dainty Luke Watson over RWC player of the year Schalk Burger! Rooitwit hopes we will forget that blunder. But take comfort rooitwit your massive blunder was not as bad as the blunders by mozzzzzzz and the ORG. 

Rassie is obviously a great coach and his presence is being missed. There are probably sound reasons why he is not with the team. 

 I note in passing that there are those who were complaining bitterly, when we were winning, that Rassie wasn't giving Nienaber a fair chance to run the team. Now that we are losing its all Rassie's fault because he s not with the team.

Bwahhaahhaahhaahahah oh the foibles of some very hapless rugby posters blinded by RDS.

Im very curious to see what the Boks come up with this week?

Desperation. The only thing left in them.

The Boks had the same problems with Steph and without. The only difference is we didn't have a porous highway on the fringes and a little more in the way if carries over the gainline (Steph ranks 29th of all top top 30 ball carriers in SA by volume, ranks somewhere around 70th overall. Steph doesn't have very high production, and actually has by far the most misses tackles under Josè. We don't need him, and he won't make any kind of difference to the team. Putting the ball more in the hands if Wiese was an improvement.

Lood out, Steph out, Damian out, Kolisi out. 

It’s really hard to believe the level of emotional thinking on this Board. So with Dud Toit we would win?

Well this is the point Dud Toit left the Lions show after being monstered by a wing:

At that point the aggregate score was 28 to 22 in favour of the Lions.

After he leaves the remainder of the series is 43 to 19 in favour of the Springboks.

Here’s another stat Dud Toit has an overall win rate as a Bok in the mid 50s….Dud Toit has played in 58 tests of which we have won 32 for a 55% win ratio…..well below any other Bok  player number I have ever calculated.

Dud Toit associated with Bok succcess? Nope…exactly the opposite.   Case closed.

Steph hasn't got the production to be a factor. Were he less useless on defence, he'd simply be invisible, like Kolisi. Steph is a very, very overrated player. You can tell how much of a myth he is by how little info any of his followers can present to defend him. They like him, but they cannot tell you why . All these plaudits for things that can never be seen. 

The problem is that there are some positions where the Goats don't have a choice.  

Pollard is one of them and as far as I can tell Du Toit is another. 

You can make some serious improvements to the front row ... Like replacing the useless Bongi with Akker.

Any long standing club centre pair would be an improvement on what the Goats have.