So it’s time to finally pull together the effects of Pollard’s boot and the effects of the red card….to put a postscript on our WC ‘win’. I really hesitate to do this. The old Gary Player story, the more I practice the luckier I get. But Harrassmiss is a very lucky fella…again. 

Nobody who wins three  consecutive knockout games by a single point each can be accused of bad luck. But to do so with your kicker making 9 consecutive kicks….that’s uncanny. Add to that the red card which effectively put your team up by a man for half of the game and this begins to feel a little weird.

So if you eliminate the effects of the red card, 10 points according to a study of red cards and their effects on scoring ……and you eliminate the kicking differential of 5 points, missed AB kicks vs Pollard’s 100% record….the differential is staggering.

Adjusting for the card and Pollard’s superior kicking….we should have won the WC final by 15 points. We won it by 1. I was able despite my dislike for Rassie methods to applaud our WC final win in 2019, where we scored tries and emerged the clearly better team. This victory by the boot over a 14 man NZ team feels more like a loss.

Our win over France was the high point of the campaign….but the subsequent wins over a poor English team and a disadvantaged AB team feel like just plain luck. So four years of anticipation seem unresolved. 

Perhaps this Olympic cycle is too long for rugby. It works in soccer because the club competitions almost dominate the WC. In rugby it really is the pinnacle. It’s great that we have done it four times, but the first three feel a lot more legitimate. Perhaps we can back it up with a first Erasmus win in a non WC year RC.

....as is verbrande hout. (“if ifs and ands were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers' hands”)

Will this anti Rassie FAKE Bok supporter ever stop whining about the Boks winning two consecutive world cups. He just cant get over the tragedy

The buffoon thinks its all down to luck. He seems totally oblivious to the fact he has made a complete twit of himself.

Doos didn't have the thick skin mozzz has and disappeared. Wonder if he will ever recover. 

Will mozzz every recover a reasonable level of judgment is another question. 

Not all down to luck…..but luck was a huge component. But if it was down to genius, that genius is pretty special….being sharp enough to plan to win three one point games and anticipate the advantages of a red card in the process. Amazing.

And then the great man staring into the distance with pink clouds floating by….pure corn, but apparently the kind of drivel you love HasBeen. Poor old Draad is lost in his volk.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

ROTFLMAO!

Ah the Indian connection……waaaaaaaaaahahahahaha!

Say Peeper you never updated your de Kock defense. Tell us how he did against the Indians….you being an expert in Indian sports.

YAWN

Dave if you are bored give us another of your lists…..but pulleeze……don’t tell us how the genius should have played Am not Kriel …Snyman not Mostert….the Du Preez twins and not Vermeulen

If your coach is a genius your contrary  views are scarcely likely to be valid, are they?

This is what I’m talking about….this type of post is just disrespectful to the great man:

Saffex

Hall Of Fame

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Rassie the genius proved me wrong in terms of my calls but at no point have I ever not been a huge Rassie fan

By far the best Bok coach ever

So you were wrong….okay, I can accept that. The solution for you  is obviously never to post any views contrary to those of the Genius.

Nope I still believe without a doubt RG should have started ahead of Mostert for as you know, Mostert would literally not make my squad of 100 players

But as I’ve said there is no doubt Rassie knows RG is better than Mostert but felt he needed the strength of RG on the bench to balance out the strength of the 23 over 80min

This is why I said the loss of Lood was bigger than I had anticipated as I was sure that without Lood, RG would have started as we know Rassie prefers Lood over Mostert and rightly so.

Same applies to Am over Kriel, just watching Am for the Sharks this weekend reminded me of his unbelievable class - but Rassie chose to stick with Kriel which has to be admired as he showed faith and loyalty to the lesser talent on the strength of Kriel having played well up to the point Am joined the squad

For me selection is always about selecting your best 15 to start and your next best 8 for the bench but I know that in reality it does not always work out that way, in fact it hardly ever does and my son, who is making a career out of coaching reaffirms this.

Selections are not always about the best players but about having the right players on board - the players you want in the trenches with you.

Mostert I guess fits this mould, physically inferior to other players in his position but full of heart and energy and of course very durable.

I can understand Mozart's suffering at present.  He was hoping for foreign teams to beat SA in the quarterand semi-finals and then in the final.   The fact that the Boks won the 2023 WC must be attrubuted to other factors than the Springboks win and I expected all along that the same shit he came up in 2019 would resuirface.   He praised the Spring boks in 1 posting - but within a month after the  his BS attacks on Erasmus< De Allende and Du Toit resurfaced. - even more v icious than his attacks wered in the past.   

I expect the same BS will continue for years to come.        

If Bongi was not injured after 2 minutes, the Boks would have scored more points off the lineouts.
If Marx was not injured, the quarters, semi and final might not have been so close.

Marx is the one player who might be more effective than Eztebeth. 

So having a less than optimal hooker is worse than having no 15th player on the field at all? The truth is our maul did nothing against Ireland, France, England or the ABs. Our scrum certainly worked against the French and the Poms when Ox came on…..but the ABs were never in trouble at scrum time.

We had three weapons, maul, scrum, boot. We were countered first in the maul, then the scrum….the boot remained our final edge.

Marx is a great player and may have made a difference. I hate to think of where we would be without Etzebeth. But according to many Pollard never made a difference because it’s the team that wins.

What you can say for the team is they had belief and I credit Erasmus with that….they bought into his vision. The Poms by contrast never really believed and couldn’t make a few simple decisions that would have secured the test..

Lets face facts - Mozart is the world authority on Rugby coaching and on rugy as a game.   H does not even need the minute by minute evaluation of individual players - programs used by Rugby authorities world wided to evaluate what happens in matches.   If he cv annot get ffacts frm the game he ninvents lies to descrie what happened.     

Mike why don’t you rather give us another post about how the Democratic Party is imploding….your obsession with me is approaching Peeper levels,

Well of course the AB scrum was not in trouble against us - we had Fourie at hooker and with that we lost the ability to dominate their scrum

Had we had a proper hooker on board we would have destroyed the AB scrum in that second half like we did in the warm up game

Obvious really

It was Cane who fcked up, and now it somehow diminishes our RWC win? What kinda playground toddler reasoning is that?...not his first time either...the Allblacks had a bad run of ill discipline of late...bit ironic after getting away with close to murder during the Richie years...they should be better disciplined next time.

PS, our hooker was probably taken out deliberately,  so it should have been 2 red cards actually. 

True Draad that take out of Bongi was very suspect

Draad if Dud Toit did what Cane did you would be defending him to the hilt….it was a technical red card. Much less impact on Kriel than the tackle he himself made earlier in the WC.

How many people on here defended Bismarck?

The maul never got going, because the lineouts were a shambles. The Boks scored so few maul tries because of this. 

Cane had a choice - he made to wrong one

It's bad luck, and I feel for him, but it's still his mistake...the Bokke held on for the win...we lost to Ireland at Newlands after Stander got red carded...sometimes a red has the opposite effect...