Official Springbok Tri-Nations Thread

Players that stood out for me.

Conrad
de Villiers
Habana (Not because of the try, he actually played rugby for a change :p)
Juan Smit
Schalk Burger
January
Bakkies

I think the rest was just not in it 100%

I know that PDV wants to develop Steyn into a # 10. But is that the possition for him ? I think he's a player that needs space and a little time to work with. I think Make him a fullback. He is brilliant under the high ball, and given a few seconds and little space he can make things happen.

I didn't see magic from him today as he was under huge pressure.

I wish Spies played :(
 
Pitbull said:
I know that PDV wants to develop Steyn into a # 10. But is that the possition for him ? I think he's a player that needs space and a little time to work with. I think Make him a fullback. He is brilliant under the high ball, and given a few seconds and little space he can make things happen.

I didn't see magic from him today as he was under huge pressure.(
Click to expand...

I will argue about the Steyn case... I think he will not be nearly involved enough at fullback.
 
LancelotSA said:
First off I thought it was a great performance by the Boks despite the result. They showed that they are still one of the few teams that can give the All Blacks a run for their money.
Click to expand...
I didn't really see the All Blacks running for their money. They were too busy running toward our try line. I never got the idea that we took control away from the All Blacks, and after the first 15 mins of the second half the outcome was plain as night.

The next game is going to be even more difficult. If I was the coach I'd be worried: the All Blacks didn't have all their key players, and they weren't playing their best game either.
 
LancelotSA said:
First off I thought it was a great performance by the Boks despite the result. They showed that they are still one of the few teams that can give the All Blacks a run for their money.
Click to expand...
You would:D So as long as we can give them a run for their money we doing well??!!:confused:

Conditions certainly favoured the Blacks, we cannot play rugby in wet, greasy conditions like we saw there tonight.

Having said that I think Schalk was my man of the match. He tackled and carried the ball up like a trojan and despite being his 1st game back in a while, he went the full 80 minutes at 110%. The other loosies were no where sorry to say...

Butch was off at flyhalf, his tactical kicking was woeful today, as was his decision making.

How good were those 2 line out steals made by Bekker when he came on. Great prospect!!!

Scrums were a disaster once again. We went backwards in the 1st half and conceded a tight head, the 2nd half stabilized but as fiekus pointed out we unable to get the right shoulder. At least he weren't going backwards on our ball in the 2nd half!!!

Adrian had a fantastic game. I thought he was solid on both defense and attack and Conrad was good under the high ball and didn't leak tackles as some thought he might.

The tight 5 didn't really assert themselves neither did the loose forwards and that's worrying considering the Black pack has been weakened by injuries and retirements...

Jean solid, Ricky solid. Lets hope we can improve from here...
 
Pitbull said:
ok given,

But do you think # 10 is the right place for him ?
Click to expand...

To be honest I really do not know... There have been calls for centre but over time and with maturity I think flyhalf could work with him. The only reason we even think of not considering that now is that we (and I apologise for talking on behalf of everyone but it seems to be general consensus out there) feel he takes a few too many risks and this will probably change with maturity and experience.

I definately think he brought something to the game when he came on at flyhalf. I agree with Naas that Butch did not look 100% but Frans started taking the ball to the ABs and had them thinking more. Can't recall Butch running it?
 
LancelotSA said:
To be honest I really do not know... There have been calls for centre but over time and with maturity I think flyhalf could work with him. The only reason we even think of not considering that now is that we (and I apologise for talking on behalf of everyone but it seems to be general consensus out there) feel he takes a few too many risks and this will probably change with maturity and experience.

I definately think he brought something to the game when he came on at flyhalf. I agree with Naas that Butch did not look 100% but Frans started taking the ball to the ABs and had them thinking more. Can't recall Butch running it?
Click to expand...

True,

Might just be that I think this guy has the most rugby tallent I have seen in any player ever. Might just be that I expect miracles every time he takes the ball :o

Maybe you're right. Let him play 10 more and get the exp for this kind of test rugby.
 
Last edited:
I was spitting mad after the game and even changed the channel to watch the F1 Sat practice... later on changed back to hear Naas and Bobby going on about things, but Bob said something that made me feel a bit better lol.
He said we didn't play well but to have "kept up" with them is a positive sign to take into next week's game. The AB are so confident about Dunedin and the "House of Pain", so if we can knock them over there...

Ah well. go bokke!
 
TMoose said:
I didn't really see the All Blacks running for their money. They were too busy running toward our try line. I never got the idea that we took control away from the All Blacks, and after the first 15 mins of the second half the outcome was plain as night.

The next game is going to be even more difficult. If I was the coach I'd be worried: the All Blacks didn't have all their key players, and they weren't playing their best game either.
Click to expand...

Your comments appear to show that for you the result was not in doubt from the day PDV was elected coach to be honest.

And if anyone was not playing their best game it was us! And who are all these key AB players? McCaw?
 
LancelotSA - please we never ever looked like beating the All Blacks. From about the 70th minute onwards, the All Blacks were on our tryline, threatening to score a try. They were very dominant and in the entire second half, we hardly made it into their 22. Also consider the fact that Carter missed a sitter of a penalty in the first half. Furthermore, there were a few players missing from the AB side, besides Richie McCaw.

Although having said that, the AB no.4 should be sent off when he tackled Smit...
 
Congrats to NZ they were tactically the better side! :)
 
sandmanm34 said:
You would:D So as long as we can give them a run for their money we doing well??!!:confused:
Click to expand...

I personally do not turn my back when the team I support loses a away game.

We showed commitment and were in no way disgraced.

So your logic, which appears to be that if you team loses they must suck, is so much better than mine then?
 
Dominic Rooney said:
LancelotSA - please we never ever looked like beating the All Blacks. From about the 70th minute onwards, the All Blacks were on our tryline, threatening to score a try. They were very dominant and in the entire second half, we hardly made it into their 22. Also consider the fact that Carter missed a sitter of a penalty in the first half. Furthermore, there were a few players missing from the AB side, besides Richie McCaw.
Click to expand...
I think you're kinda agreeing with LancelotSA? By saying that "we never looked like beating the All Blacks" means we didn't play well but if they were "threatening to score" so much, wy didn't we get buried by them in the 2nd half? That is a positive for next week :D
Agree on Brad Thorn incident, hope he gets cited.

Edit: he was cited and received 1 week ban
 
Last edited:
Dominic Rooney said:
LancelotSA - please we never ever looked like beating the All Blacks. From about the 70th minute onwards, the All Blacks were on our tryline.
Click to expand...

So rugby is only 10 minutes long now?

And if you read my post above you will see that the fact they were on our line was helped by the fact that the TMO decided Habana carried the ball back!

And once again, as a true fan, I see that as a huge positive anyway... you state they were camped on our line for 10 minutes yet we managed to keep them out! Good defence boys!

EDIT : Good to see Fiekus also uses this logic! :)
 
LancelotSA said:
Your comments appear to show that for you the result was not in doubt from the day PDV was elected coach to be honest.

And if anyone was not playing their best game it was us! And who are all these key AB players? McCaw?
Click to expand...
It wasn't in doubt, and I said so on these forums, your reply was that you can't wait for them to prove me wrong and I replied that I'd love it if they did. They didn't. Remember that the All Blacks were also robbed of another try by the ref. Our scrums were nowhere, our usually stable line outs were scrappy, we didn't manage to secure first phase ball, we haven't got enough play makers because we stuff people like Watson in the team to be PC. The only thing that was impressive was our defense and only because that's what we were doing most of the time. In short we did all the same things wrong as against Wales and Italy and we still don't have stable combinations.

Furthermore our coach is apparently terrified of New Zealand and so many "we're so scared" comments are coming out of the squad that I wonder why they went at all. This game was lost psychologically before we even got on the plane.

This is probably one of the most vulnerable All Black squads in years. And no, they're missing quite a few players, though your thoughts on how key they are probably differ from mine. Just as my predicted score line differs from yours.
 
LancelotSA said:
I personally do not turn my back when the team I support loses a away game.

We showed commitment and were in no way disgraced.

So your logic, which appears to be that if you team loses they must suck, is so much better than mine then?
Click to expand...
You making a lot of assumptions there...
 
The margin of NZ's victory was greater than I predicted. Was disheartening to see such a lack of vision on attack with that mostly pedantic, predictable passing which inevitably led to us running out of space.
 
TMoose said:
It wasn't in doubt. Our scrums were nowhere, our usually stable line outs were scrappy, we didn't manage to secure first phase ball, we haven't got enough play makers because we stuff people like Watson in the team to be PC. The only thing that was impressive was our defense and only because that's what we were doing most of the time. In short we did all the same things wrong as against Wales and Italy and we still don't have stable combinations.

Furthermore our coach is apparently terrified of New Zealand and so many "we're so scared" comments are coming out of the squad that I wonder why they went at all. This game was lost psychologically before we even got on the plane.

This is probably one of the most vulnerable All Black squads in years. And no, they're missing quite a few players, though your thoughts on how key they are probably differ from mine. Just as my predicted score line differs from yours.
Click to expand...

We appear to be seeing the same game through totally different glasses so these discussions would be pointless in the end.

I have seen very few "we are scared" comments
We won a few NZ lineouts from what I recall
The scrums weren't great but we never were going to shove them off the ball
Not sure on which occasions we lost our first phase ball but if we did I can't recall us never securing it
As for NZ vulnerability, I am still fathoming that. Sounds like psychological games from the ABs
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X