Today I watched the Quarter final again vs France and boy oh boy are you wrong about Willemse.
He is excellent in management from the back, he links really well and creates space for his fellow players , his roaming abilities and cover defence, is ten times better than Fassi, his attacking capabilities out of nothing is world class.
Make no mistake Fassi is great under the High ball and he can run great lines, but so can Willemse.
Willemse is definitely the incumbent at 15 and his versatility, allows him to play top notch games at 10 to.
10 might not be his strong suit at all, but look no further than his mom performance for the stormers that you just mentioned in the pivot position.
He is world class and rightfully our incumbent at 15. Not so Fassi needs to seriously pick up his game, if he wants to surpass Willemse.
kingcorn
Senior player
2764 posts
As many of you know is that I'm not Willemse biggest fan as I believe he is seriously overhyped. He is nowhere near the class of Frans Steyn. Speaking of the latter, he had really dumb coaches around him such De Villiers and Meyer. It was only Rassie that truly understood his value. That said, Steyn also had a big attitude which Willemse doesn't have which is great to see how humble he is.
My bug bear is that I just don't like he playes. He reminds me of players that has great skills but no-one can play off him. At least with Jantjies, his players knew what he was going to do and how to run off him.
Willemse had an awful game in the wet at 10 and as a result we lost. One week later and he is back at 10 and get the MoM, gets all of his kicks and a cheeky drop goal. The backline still looked disfunctional as he continues to take the ball up in contact and doing his chicken step dance.
For me his best positing is the bench to be honest.
Lets look at where he could be used
10 - We have Pollard and Libbok, Sasha is also making waves in that position and not to mention Hendrikse who is starting to show his value. So as a 10 starter, no
12 - Dud the tractor keeps being selected and I don't think they'll drop him, Esterhuizen is back and Am has been used at 12, then we have the young Ethan Hooker who is an absolute animal, bigger and faster than Willemse. So he is not a started at 12 for me.
15 - Probably the only position for me where he could start. However, Fassi has shown how good he really is and with Willie still hanging around, who would you want to start. Fassi or Willemse. Fassi has gone up several notches on his defence and his kicking is top class. His biggest strength is taking the high ball. Reminds of Israel Folua. Then his pace, Fassi has unreal pace, not that Willemse is slow. To me, I would start Fassi.
So Willemse is the perfect number 23 player but I can't see him being a starter other than 15