What lies behind the failure of Serfontein/JJ

A little blast from the past re Barry:

"When Springbok inside centre De Wet Barry executed his first crash-tackle of the match against opposite number Steve Kefu in Saturday's Tri-Nations Test at Newlands, the Wallabies knew that they would be in for a long afternoon.

Kefu admitted afterwards that he had never been tackled so hard in his career. It was Kefu's first taste of Test rugby against another Southern Hemisphere opponent, and he said he could feel the difference physically.

"De Wet's defence was unbelievable and had a disruptive effect on our backline. We wanted to play the ball wide as quickly as possible, but he cut us off in midfield," said the young Aussie.

Barry's aggressive defence was directly responsible for at least five turnovers for South Africa. His tackling in midfield, the Brent Russell factor and a superb performance by the Bok forwards lay the foundation for a 26-22 victory - something that had seemed impossible just a week before."

DeWet Barry had a good few years at Springbok level and combined well with Marius Joubert. 
DeWet Barry is a typical South African centre. Strong ball carrier, strong defender- but with limited play making ability. He also seemed to have limited brain cells.         He could only do short pop passes, but this is the case with most of our inside centres. Sometimes the pop pass allows his supporting runner to cut the small gap, but for much of the time it is a hospital pass. Although what he did do for a time, was better than what many of other centres offered. That was until Jean Devilliers hit the scene. 

 sharkbok jean has no pass and really running lines. there are three seasond of great attack 2004, 2007 without jean, 2013 with willie covering fir oyr kak centres doing their job at 15 and wing! pathetic!  look at his 2008 and 2009 stats god awful. all the way until now really bad. nah barry at his best did more than jean ever has. jeans only threat is the intercept and shooting out the line has cost us big games and the championship last year. 

 Barry a weapon bloody hell that explains alot. Moz are you sure you are English speaking?

I think what Moz means, Dave, is sort of what the match report I quoted demonstrates. Barry destroyed the Aussies in that game with his crash tackling. He basically took Steve Kefu out of contention minutes into the game. He also played a huge part in our 40-26 win over the All Blacks at Ellis Park by attacking and breaching Andrew Mehrtens' channel. He was a physical weapon the likes of which we haven't seen since in the midfield. No, not a player of finesse or particularly effective distribution, but he still played a crucial part in many of the Bok successes. He did unravel of course and became an honorary carrier of the old yellow card, but when he was on fire he was a fearsome opponent.

 In today's game he would be exposed for the one dimensional player he was. I don't recall him making much of an impression back then either. He was pretty useless. I'm sure the odd big hit made an impression but somehow I doubt it given he hardly commanded a physical presence

He was your Mike Tindall...ha ha ha ha ha !!!!!!!!!! 



Oh boy  

 No tin dal was far better and he was pretty shit

He was pretty what ?????????
Because he sure as hell wasn't pretty !!!!  

 actually barry had better distribution than jean. jean is a really aweful player. look at the stats on jean poor in most games. he is the definition of ponderous! sa fans whine about a lack of skills but never get to the heart of the problem which is players like jean! the guys is not great and never achieved the standard of barry in 2004. not even close.

Barry was probably our best tackling centre since Joggie Jansen. That guy put his body on the line. Posters ask how you can disrupt the NZ passing game....another Barry tackling deep and causing turnovers would do that. Only Frans among our current centres puts in really heavy tackles and not nearly as far behind the advantage line as Barry.

 Fransie - the player with the worst tackling record in Super 15 -  is Mozart answer to the problem.  If he had any attacking ability and was not as slow as a cardhorse - there may be arguments for him in the team - but there is NONE.    The worst defender and worst attacker in Super 15 - what a farce.      

 

 yeah but you want our top 3 defensive 13s not to play! what a chop mika.

 Cardhorse.......

 Th3 Moron Brigade out in full strength.   BS is their norm in rugby evaluation.  Problem is that thinking on rugby issues is way past your capacity.  

Test:
AfrikaansSaffexVlagshitScunthorpe

Well its the same old story. Matfiled is good in the lineouts but not much else but he is the greatest lock ever.Barry was good on defence but not much else and as slow as a carthorse.Jean has been on of the top centers in world rugby for years but Barry is better.Bwahahahahahahahha what a comedy we have here. Gonz ou leading the way.
Ou cerudnuce windpomp realising he is about to blunder assures us all he is saying reallyly is Barry was not that bad. Well cerudnce windpomp tell us simply without getting yourself in a knott for once - was Barry better than Jean or not?

 barry had ball distribution a clever boot and could break the line. mate he had way more tools than jean who relies on intercepts only. jean is terible always was except for wing where he was one of the best players for south africa in 2004,