Rhis weekend games have been completed and once again it was noticeable that the SA teams were singularly unsuccessful in scoring tries. We have had all five Super 15 franchises in action this week and the end result was the scoring of two tries by the Stormers and one try each of two other franchises and none by the other two.
The scores by the franchises were as follows:-
Waratahs - Bulls game = 19 - 12
Sharks - Cheetahs game = 19 - 8
Stonmmers - Lions Game = 18 - 6
The franchises scored 65 points combined - the breakdown being as follows:-
Tries = 20 points
Try Conversions = 4 points
Penalty Conversions = 41 points
Analysis of the above indicated some clear issues that influences affecting the scoring of tries. These inckude one positive and two negatives.
Positive - Tight Defense
The defenses of the teams yesterday was tight - making scoring of tries very difficult. The Cheetahs in the past had often enough failed badly in the defense department - but it was not the case yesterday - but their could be a nasty problem here is well - namely the attacking capacity of the Sharks is mediocre.
Negative - Giving away Penalties
There is a negative - namely to prevent scoring of tries by deliberately giving away penalties to the opposition. This is a dicey operation - often enough leading to yellow cards - which happened twice yesterday (ourie and Brussow). Aside from gifting the opposition cheap points - the impact iof having yellow-carded players is a huge negative. However, sometimes the players get away with illegal/unprofessional play when the ref fouled up and punishes the attacking team like happened yesterday in at least one case.
Negative - Player deficiencies
Throughout the series all the teams 0 with the exception of the Cheetahs showed a number of poor tendencies with a major impact on the try scoring abilities of teams. These include the following:-
* Inability of the loosies to become part of and augment the attacking abilities of backline players.
* Poor reading of the game and vision of key backline players.
* Poor ball skills of players
* Speed deficiency of backline players
Loosie Attacking deficiencies
In attacking play loosies have three major functions. namely -
* ball protection at tackle breakdown points';
* breakdown ball recovery
* Linking up with backline players in attacks.
Lets look at the situation yesterday. The Sharks yesterday had two loosies who played no role in all three aspects listed - The Cheetahs missed a key player (who is outstanding in all 3 aspects (Labuschagne) - the Bulls have had no real player meeting the three rewuirwmwnrs and the Lions missed Whiteley badly. The Stormers loosies yesterday did nto meet the relevant requirements at all.
Other than the Cheetahs and Lions - the tendency is to play at least one tight 5 player as a loosie, while the loosies in general display poor ball sense and is incapable of performing most of the listed functions for a variety of reasons. Dome are just too slow to be part of any attacking moves and in ball protection and recovery - most lack vision and finally they lack ball handling skills.
As a result their ball carries only result in further mauls 0 mainly because they have no ball passing skills and their carries often enough leads to possession losses and even penalties.
As long as we have the present situation - where heavy and speed-deficient players are preferred - the situation will not change. We will have the continued case that we have no assistance from the loosies in playing attacking rugby the present deficiency will continue..
Abilities of key Players
Here we are talking of key players in position 10 and 12. Over the years we have developed a tendency to select one-dimensional and robotic flyhalfs - whose only obvious and only asset is kicking at goal. As a consequence they play strictly in accordance with pre-match instructions and they have no ability to read games and because of deficient game reading abilities - they foul up badly at times. They kick balls where they should pass and vice versa and they also pass balls to the wrong players and some of their passing skills is seriously defective.
The situation yesterday was that Boshoff tried to play a comprehensive game. Watts tried nothing and neither did Potgieter. There were some encouraging signs that Swiel brought a different scenario to the scene and Goosen was severly missed by the Cheetahs.
At 12 the situation is that the crashballing mania is in existence. All of Steyn, Serfontein and even De Villiers were seriously guilty of ball hogging and crashballing 0 a fruitless exercise if there is deficient ball protection and quick enough tackle ball recovery.
There are backline players with serious speed deficiencies. The main problem is with players like Steyn and Pietersen. The are singularly incapable to keep up with the game and often enough arrive at breakldown points after the arrival of tight 5 players. This makes running of players in attacking lines imposible.
The idea of most backline players are to run straight at the first defenders and then get tackled with ease and either lose possession - give away penalties - or kill attacking moves as a result
Their ball handling skills are defective and not up to standard and they have little idea of effective ball off-loading like De Allende did yesterday with the Carr try. He got praqised excessively for something which should be natural amongst backline players 0 namely frawing in two or more defenders and off-loading effecftively in the process.
Conclusion
The idea to use penalties exclusively to score points is problematic. If the opposition does not conceed kickable penalties - the opportunity to get points that way dries up - like happened with the Bulls yesterday.
Opposing teams know exactly how to prevent penalties and since they have no fear of the general backline capacity of SA teams - they do not concede many penalties in maul situations, so it is urgent that th attacking deficiencies of all our Super 15 teams - other than the Cheetahs 0 should eb seriously looked at and improved. .
