Willemse

Willemse 

Willemse  does not have the nous for test flyhalf yet...perhaps he will mature, but not for a while and maybe never sufficiently to be the team’s top decision maker.

That also makes fullback a hurdle....he lost the AB home test in 2018 by insisting on being involved at the breakdown, when we needed to protect our lead.

So centre is the obvious choice, he does have a brilliant step and good speed. He might need to bulk up a little but he is a good defender. We need to move on from the Tractor’s cul de sac running....we dodged the no centre attack bullet at  the WC, but we won’t always be that lucky,

Watched the game on Saturday and I was amazed at his poor performance.

Sure he has got talent but thus far he has never produced a performance that has made him first or second selection for #10, #15, or centre for the Boks.

Trust he does find the form and position soon.

He seems to require more/stricter mandating. 

He's isn't as creative as Jantjies and not as solid as Pollard. Kinda in the middle somewhere while being better at some things and worse at other things than the two incumbents.

Normally I wouldn't call for a player to be strictly controlled but I think Willemse might benefit from the coach limiting what he's allowed to do. A license to focus on one way to play.

I get the impression that his creativity works against him. He considers too many options which causes him to be a bit behind the situation. It makes the rest of the backs a bit uneasy and people around him look out of sync with what he's doing.

I think Willemse still has a long way to go and can learn a lot from Willie who always knows how to join the line. 

He tried too match to break the line or to step defenders with ball in hand. Watch his body positing, his head and his hands. He has both feet planted and then tries to step the attacker when he should be timing his runs and know when to join the line. 

He never seems to be creating or distributing when he plays from 10 but always wants to run with the ball. 

I don't think he is ready and should not be in the bok team. He needs to spend a couple of seasons finding this feet. 

It is too soon, he is young and hopefully by the time he is 23 he would have settled 

"He tried too match to break the line or to step defenders with ball in hand. Watch his body positing, his head and his hands. He has both feet planted and then tries to step the attacker when he should be timing his runs and know when to join the line."

Exactly my point.

He needs a brave coach to simplify the game for him and unclutter his mind. Do three things well, like Pollard, rather than doing 10 things ok'ish.

I've also been listening to Mark Kohane(Who I don't rate, but..) on Willemse and the great players is knowing when the right time is. 

But if you want to play at 10, you have to be able to get the phases going, set players up and then decide when you want to take on the defence. 

I think that he can be one of those 10s with time on the ball where he can keep the defenders guessing and don't always have to stand that deep in the pocket. But how many 10s break the line of set phases?  

Willemse isn't cerebral enough for top flight rugby. At schooboy level, you can succeed on physical attributes alone, and by going on feel. At the highest level, you need to think. Willemse has always been a comedy of errors. The most dominant forward display against England in the past fifteen years was the 2018 EOYT. He and Damian were gifted very rare front foot ball and space, against a defence who was so on the backfoot they defended passively. Neither one could inflict a dent. Aimless running, ineffective process passing. Many missed opportunities. They will never change because they will never cultivate the mind. Sadly, these feely unthinking types are the model for attacking rugby in SA. Contrast Willemse with Willie, who knows his spacing and can manipulate defenders with his movement on and off the ball. He creates space and opportunities. Willemse ruins opportunities. He is exploitable. Another in a very long line of players who were ordained before they ever showed anything of note. A reputation that will overshadow his production. 

He's still a baby, Aug.

Give the lad a chance.

He is 22 years old, he has had a few years of senior rugby. When is he going to turn a corner, and why? I don't believe that it'll happen. This is always the last stand for these players: More time. We were told to wait for Lambie, Goosen, Jantjes, Jantjies, Mvovo, Goosen, Steph, Damian, Serfontein... the list goes on. They never click. Willemse is not going to be a cornerstone Bok. We don't have a 15 anywhere near Willie, and no one close to Pollard. Lister keeps producing sheets of "class acts", the reality is that there is a big gulf between our first choice 10 and 15, and the next best. Then there is a drop off a cliff for everyone else. 

10 - Pollard, Janties
15 - Willie, Bosch

That's about it. 

"he has had a few years of senior rugby'

Sure, where he has played in a few positions while still getting used to the level of competition. 

He's not done too badly and I struggle to write him off. 

Jantjies is a class 10. Perhaps not suited to the Springbok way but by no means a non-starter. He dominated Barrett and Pollard at SR level continuously for a few years.

Morné is the most successful 10 in South African rugby history, holding the most records. Willemse currently holds no records, and has won nothing. I rest my case.

Morne was a great placekicker at goal - but for other aspects of the game by some distance the worst flyhalf I have ever seen playing the game on test or super Rigby level.   He went to France and became the bench-warming flyhalf  of Stade Francais - enough said,   

Morné can and has played successfully in a less dominant pack. Of course, if a team is receiving slow ball, what is the backline going to do? This is where poor centres come into the equation, as our teams need dominance up front to run into a fragmented defence, get around them on the outside. Movement off 10 is the key. Morné was never the problem. Our poor centre play, particularly from 12, that's the chief weakness. 10-12-Ruck, 10-15-Ruck/Kick, 10-11(coming inside 12)-Ruck. I have detailed these distribution chains. They are quite revealing. The expectation is 10 runs, and the bigger the happy smiling face, the bigger the creativity. Not so. Only Bok 10 better than Morné in the past 20 years is Butch. 

The primary job of a 10 is to orchestrate the game....Morne did that time and again. Willemse is all about his own game. It takes a bit of imagination to see what Morne adds....Willemse is obvious, it’s what he subtracts that flummoxes the simpletons.  

How = by making BS kicks and handing over possession.  If you say Steyn  was so good, why -

*    Did Meyer dropped him from the team twice in 2012 and once in 2014'

*    Why in 2017 did the All Blacks scored 57 points in each of the two matches he  played in? 

*    Why did Stade Francais virtually all the time used him for benchwarming and not start with him,

The two people on suite who pretend they know rugby as a game and constantly write BS on site show again how utterly clueless they are.       

I'd say Willemse should model himself on Barrett. 

Particularly where it comes to efficiency. Barrett is just as, if not more, creative in his thinking than Willemse is yet is solid as all hell at the same time. 

Willemse inserts creativity into the game in a responsive way rather than in the proactive manner that Barrett, who is a master at it, does. 

If I was coaching Willemse I'd be trying to shift him along that spectrum and as close to Barrett's side of it as is possible.

Willemse tries too hard...he should take a mental step back, relax and wait for his instinct to kick in. IMO he's trying to force creativity. It's a mental thing...he must stop thinking and start instinctively feeling the game...feel the quickening...

Nah, none, nothing to do with the malt brew. You either feel it, or you don't... you can't imitate.