What happened to the Boks expansive game

Looking at the team for Saturday where players like Willemse, Gelant and Jantjies have been overlooked for Frans Steyn.....one has to ask, what happened to expansive rugby. Our centres are devoid of any attacking model.....they tractor it up and reset.

Nor are our forwards with notable exceptions, inclined to offload in contact. Main ball carrier Dud crashes into the first tackler and falls on the deck protecting the ball.

Face it, any pretense of expansive rugby relies solely Kolbe doing something magical with the scraps of ball he receives. Gone is the attacking rugby HM tried to instill eg in that great 2013 test against the ABs and which Coetzee struggled to implement with Jantjies.

We are back to Kragdadigheid.....or perhaps this is the last chance for Kragdadigheid. The rush to expansive rugby was always a flawed effort, even though the Lions did it shockingly well for a few years.

And where are the critics who called HM's rugby outdated. Hell he was an innovator compared to Eraser, who has turned the clock back to 1998 Mallett. Defense/ Pollard and Dud doing the job Honiball and Muller did.....loooots of kicking.

But lets be honest, given where we were after the disa strous YE tour, this was the only way forward. Lets hope it works.....Go (the  1998) Bokke!

Count the number of tries scored since Erasmus took over and perhaps you may find out what is really happening and compare this with what happened under Meyer.   You obviously are totally clueless about modern rugby.  

A popularity contest of the losers. Doesn't matter who you mention the Bokkies have never and will never be an expansive team. This new coach is just a throw back to what you guys always did under every other coach but with a little  more kicking and less wing play. 

Dave

There is one problem that is an absolute NO-NO in rugby and that is predictability.   Other rules are to retain possession as much as possible and use kicking judicially to ensure that recipients are placed under pressure and that the kicks are not merely handover of possession and in the alternative open up the field for attacking and  scoring of tries.  Some people miss the pot completely when they are referring to comprehensive rugby - they do not understand what it really entails and write total BS on site about the concept.   I think you are obviously not one of those,

Meyer and Coetzee broke all those requirements to smithereens and you must remember the starter of the thread regards those two as ideal coaches.            

There are degrees of 'expansiveness' Dave.....we are a lot less expansive under Eraser than any of our RC opponents.

Dave 

The fact is the description of  "expansive" rugby is I believe a misnomer.   What really applies is comprehensive rugby where the usage of all the players in every aspect of the game are used.  

This is where there is interplay between forwards and backline players in all aspects of the game.   A list of what happen in all cases will be too long.

We kick up and unders. Nz, France, Japan, Oz use their backs off good ball . Poms, Bargies, Wallies are somewhere in between. The only side we resemble is Ireland, and isn't that a surprise.

We use our backs on turnover ball.....when they are kicked on (Kolbe).....or in phase play if  we have an overlap. Beyond that, they are there to tackle or kick. If you can't see any of this Dave, that's fine....but you are a small minority.

Dave

You will never get some of the sheisters on site stop using the phrase that Meyer in his idiocy used - namely that the SA backline players lack the ball skills to play a ball-in-hand game.   They fully believe that Meyer was always right in everything he said and did,   

You no doubt will also remember his classic about his selection norms in that he said that he "knows what the players he selected were capable of",  forgetting  when they were capable of the things he credited them with.   Some was capable of the things he claimed so many years before 2015 that they were unplayable in the WC tests,  

I will find the time to write a precis on what comprehensive rugby are all about and post same sometimes next week,   

@DumbMike,

Look at the SuperXV New Zealand teams, do you say that their passing skills are the same as SA teams? Our forwards are much stronger ball carriers than theirs, but their backs have better passing skills. Anyone with more than 1 brain cell could identify this. 

The Boks have butchered many try-scoring opportunities this world cup due to poor passes. I am not saying the passing in the Bok backs is terrible, but it could be better. 

Go one level down to the SuperXV, and the SA backlines players passing is not up to scratch.

I was impressed with the Cheetas skills this season so far in the SuperX14, as would anyone who understands rugby. The Lions backline in SuperRugby clearly has a much better passing game, than say the Stormers or even the Sharks. The Bulls were improving under Mitchell, but have relapsed to a donkey creatine game plan

Dave

The issue always comes up again and again - the latest being kicking.   Nobody ever said kicking is not an essential part of the game and especially the All Blacks always used it extensively as a strategic option and still does.   

However, there is a problem with that component of the game and that is the relates to strategic value of kicks and the key is whether recipients are put under pressure or not.   In the past under Meyer and Coetzee aimless kicking was the norm and when it was criticized some of our members claimed that there is no such thing as aimless kicking,   In the Meyer and Coetzee years backline usage was limited and basically destroyed as a result of aimless and repetitive  kicking and crash-balling  - with the result that players became robotic in the way they played,  In any event there was a huge predictability issue as well.    

The latest criticism on Erasmus centered around kicking as well.   The members who in the past  defended the extremely defective kicking game is now attacking the kicking game usage,   However, there remains a difference and that is the fact that at present the kicking game is done more accurately and with a specific purpose in mind - in general to put opponents under pressure.   Not all kicks produce the required results - there are still a small number of poorly executed kicks - but the cancer of the past has been reduced substantially.

In the process the passing game came into play again and is now used effectively and executed better than in the past.  The fact is that backline players in the present Springbok  team score more tries than they ever did since 2012.   But that is ignored by some site members since it does not suit their books.   

The most important issue remains and that relates to the issue of predictability - which has been reduced considerably and is now vastly improved from what is was in the past decade.