Willie out, Fassi in

Willie has a niggle

Given your lifestyle, this is something you should know quite a lot about.

Chip chip are you still searching for Jesus?

Is Damian Willemse still not 100% fit? I would have picked him instead of Not so Fassi:)

And off course Faf instead of Overrated Reinach!! What is the Dr. Smoking??!!

good herb

Mpower not the shit you are smoking - Weza Special is the way to go even promoted in Amserdam.in the Walletjies. .

if we lose to morrow it'll be a howler

testing

howlatthemoon

cvbnm

cvbn

Fassi seems to have fallen out of favour with some guys here.

His form before he got injured was straight-up frightening. If he can recapture that, at Test level, I'd be very happy.

Does anybody remember the try that Marcus Smith made against the Boks last year? Where the moment he got the ball, without a thought or even a split second's notice, he ran in a straight line at an angle towards the Boks line.

That instinctive, hyper-efficient attacking instinct, that looks almost awkward in execution because it doesn't care about looks, tradition or what "should" be done.

That's the type of stuff Fassi was doing regularly. He made and scored a few tries for the Sharks doing similar things.

When I see guys doing that sort of thing, it almost feels like a watching a program that defies convention it how it executes a task, but completes the task very effectively. Like it's not weighted down by tradition or how others have achieved the task preciously.

I suppose this might be a little abstract...I'll put it into chat;

When I watch a player like Fassi at his best, it reminds me of how a computer program sometimes solves a problem: it ignores all the conventional, elegant-looking steps and instead takes the most direct, brutally efficient path to the answer. To the human eye, that path can look awkward, almost like it’s missing something, because it doesn’t follow the traditional “rules” of how the task is supposed to be done. But when a player instinctively finds that same kind of route on the field—where everyone else sees patterns, tradition, and the way it should unfold—there’s a flash of genius in it. It’s that same feeling you get when a program suddenly spits out the perfect solution in a way you never imagined, and yet it’s undeniably right, because it gets the result.

Fassi is a defensive liability. His positional play is poor, or at least it was particularly bad last week.

When there were breaks through the middle, he was nowhere near the centre of the park, so there was no last line of defence. Those breaks were good, but the defence was bad - even the cover defence. Although both wingers were injured during the game despite playing the whole match, it perhaps made the situation worse.

Fassi has always been a defence liability….he can run good lines though and is good under the high ball.

But we haven’t seen that form for quite a long time now. He just better tackle better than last Saturday!

Spot on Plum people have short memories on here - Fassi is a class act

You get dimwits like Shark telling us he is defensively poor. I can’t stand posters who are unable to acknowledge the change and development in a player

Fassi used to have a defensive issue - he was dropped from the Boks because of it. He went away, bulked up a bit and sorted his defensive frailties out

Fools like Shark will forever define him as defensively poor based on history - it’s so fucking annoying

Apparentky his positional play is poor to - what utter shit

Fassi is a gem, just like Willemse, Kolbe, Arendse, Moodie and Sacha are

Controversial statement incoming...

When on form, Fassi has a higher ceiling than any of the names you mention above, Davie.

Before his injury last year, he was by some distance our best back.

I was hoping for Willemse to start...Fassie was toothless last week...like everyone else.

The annoying thing for me last week was when Fassi did get the ball and some space, he did that Galant thing where he runs at 80% pace and then does the little jump and sidestep.

He better when he picks a line early and explodes towards the targeted area.

The very first try here is what I'm talking about. Looks almost awkward, you don't expect to see that line, as direct and picked as early...but look at the result. Fassi can do that too and when he does it, it creates chaos.

Great example of an defence orientated kick fest...not!

Well in my opinion, if Fassi did indeed work on his defence it didn’t help much, as last Saturday he was poor on defence and attack.

So let’s hope he can do better today!!

I agree DB, Willemse is a much better choice at Fullback than Fassi.

I don’t recall Fassi missing a tackle - usual rubbish on here

Plum I’d say Sacha has the highest ceiling of that group, Fassi up there along with Willemse

I'm more at ease with Willemse at the back...Fuzzy is not half bad either.