Rugby...

[flymango]

Eddie Jones. Most respected or most hated Australian in Australia today?

['Dale]

Guess BOKKIES is the appropriate word. Used to be BOKKE.

 

We'll likely pull it through in my opinion.

Hehehe

I'm positive that the Bokkies will show up well, subject to:

 

The power and dominance of the forward pack

The decision making of Faf Terrier and Elton Power Pack

EDIT ???? Execute the basics / fundamentals of the game

Edited June 18, 2016 by Puncheur

['Dale]

Eddie Jones. Most respected or most hated Australian in Australia today?

What a game

Just watched the 'delayed live'

 

The Aussies are hardegat hey

No real praise for the Englisg from the Aussie cap's interview

 

Eddie is probably well resented (is that a word?)

Big he will sleep lekka tonight

 

Coaches coach, but players have to execute

They did well - wow

 

Apparently 180+ tackles by the English ????

[Mntboy]

This from Gavin Rich is absolutely brilliant and completely spot on. We have the players, it's getting the correct game plan sorted and yes it does mean we need a level of pragmatism!

 

Former All Black coach Graham Henry, writing in a column in a New

Zealand newspaper last weekend, probably summed up what many people around the world are thinking when he lamented the

gradual diminishing of the aura of the once mighty Springboks.

 

"What was alarming for me in the Bok loss to the Irish was the total lack of passion and commitment for the jersey. In my time as All Black coach we played against Bok teams that we knew didn't have the talent and skills of us, but by g.., you knew you were in for an absolute war. That fire and

pride seems to be dying slowly and I am struggling to understand why. A once feared opponent and now they are struggling to compete with top tier nations..."

 

On the face of it, using last week as a measure, Henry’s perception is hard to argue with, and it adds to the necessity for the Boks to rediscover their old habit of showing mongrel by bouncing back when wounded by levelling the three match series against Ireland at Emirates Airlines Park on Saturday.

 

In the space of the last 10 months,

the Boks have suffered their first ever defeat to Argentina, and to cap it that defeat was at home; a bizarre loss to Japan at the World Cup; and now a first ever home defeat to Ireland. And that last result was recorded in the first game of a supposed new era under a new coach.

 

To be fair, it didn’t just start there.

The Springboks have been inconsistent for a long time now, and 2013, when Heyneke Meyer’s team lost only to New Zealand and were comfortably the second in the world, was an aberration. The tide turned at the end of 2009, when the team coached by Peter de Villiers failed to recognise that rugby is a constantly evolving sport and then allowed New Zealand and Australia to steal a march on them in the following year’s Tri-Nations. If you check out the results, the Boks have struggled since the 2009 Tri- Nations, when a three match

whitewash of the Kiwis precipitated

the corrections that have now

contributed to the All Blacks

becoming an allround team that is

pretty close to invincible.

 

The identity crisis the Boks seem to be constantly battling with might be half of the problem. There’s a

constant call for reinvention, and

those who think that Allister

Coetzee’s predecessor didn’t try to

reinvent would be wrong. In 2013 the Boks tried to play a more attacking game, and succeeded, but there wasn’t enough science to a plan that essentially revolved around the unpredictability of one man, fullback Willie le Roux, for it to be properly sustained.

 

There has seldom appeared to be the understanding of how much work an effective attacking game requires. It does not revolve just around “Have a go” or “Swing it wide” like so many South Africans seem to think it does. Ask former All Black coach John Mitchell to go through the amendments to his team’s attacking game ahead of two big 50 point wins over the Boks and Australia in the space of seven days in 2003 and you can expect to give up much of your morning.

 

It probably isn’t a coincidence that

the only local coach who can be said to be effectively coaching an

attacking game is Johan Ackermann, who just happened to have worked under Mitchell for two years before he took charge of the Lions. And if there is anyone who thinks that the Lions achieved what they have without many misfires and growing pains along the way, then that person either has a poor memory or just hasn’t been paying attention.

 

The Boks looked last week like a

team that was suffering an identity

crisis and which may also have been at odds with itself. There were Lions players in key positions once Patrick Lambie went off, but they clearly didn’t satisfy the plan of the coach, and it contributed to the perception that once again here was a Bok team trying to play an attacking game without applying science to it. As Coetzee said at the Thursday team announcement press conference, it was tactically naïve for the Boks to think once the Irish were down to 14 men it should just be a case of spreading the ball wide in search of an overlap. He used the old cricketing analogy

about hitting sixes again emphasising the need to build an

innings before being too flash – and unless the Boks adapt their approach so they mix it up more than they did in Cape Town, we can expect Coetzee to repeat that analogy ad-nauseam.

 

While there were doubtless some

who, because they’ve brought into

the ideology that flashy is the way to go, will think Faf de Klerk and Elton Jantjies did well last week, it is patently clear from everything that Coetzee has said since then that he was one person they didn’t satisfy. And he is the man who decides whether they have a Bok future after Saturday.

 

The Lions pair are both fine and

talented players, there’s no doubting that, but they are going to have to step up and do what their new coach expects them to do in Johannesburg. Coetzee has left little doubt about what he wants Jantjies to do – have a go when the situation presents

itself, but otherwise play for territory and ensure the Boks can do their attacking in the right areas of the field. Those who bulk at that thought should ask themselves whether the basic tenet of the All Black approach is that different. It isn’t.

 

No-one who saw the Boks play at the World Cup will deny that reinvention is necessary. But there needs to be wariness about what that reinvention entails and how quickly it can be achieved. Right now more than anything else the Boks need to be what Coetzee asked for last week but wasn’t delivered – they need to be

smart.

 

Doing something that plays into Irish hands just isn’t smart. The Boks have been outsmarted by Ireland, who have made quite a few changes for Saturday, two games in a row now if you go back to Dublin 2014. It’s time for that to change. The Boks need to buck up in all areas, or what was a

difficult situation last week will start becoming a calamitous one.

 

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[Mntboy]

Eddie Jones. Most respected or most hated Australian in Australia today?

I'd wager both. Extremely astute coach that gets his players buy in on the game plan for them to do it 100% properly on the field. Kudos to him and his English team!

 

Sent from my GT-S6790 using Tapatalk

[Frosty]

I don't understand why our kick offs are so deep, EVERY TIME!

 

Almost every ball gives the Irish time to clear their line.

 

No short kick to give the team time to get into a position to try get it back. Secondly, if it is taken outside the 22, the defending team has to take it back and can't kick it out.

 

PRESSURE! Something this team just doesn't know how to apply.

[HappyMartin]

The worst Springbok team I have ever seen. Can't believe I drove like hell from Ai Aix to Oliphantshoek to watch this.

[Mntboy]

The worst Springbok team I have ever seen. Can't believe I drove like hell from Ai Aix to Oliphantshoek to watch this.

Doubly frustrating for me as I am following it via text commentary from both SS and R365 and they aren't painting a nice picture. Ineptitude is abounding!

[scotty]

Missed tackles, poor scrumming, poor line calling, errors and more errors. 

[HappyMartin]

Well the Springboks have managed to stop the Irish scoring at least. I guess that's progress of some kind.

[scotty]

Whitely you beut. Go Lions Springboks 

Jantjies appears to have left his kicking boots at home. 

[Frosty]

Forget that most of the subs are Lions, they are in-form Springboks that have made an impact almost immediately.

[HappyMartin]

The lions are playing well????

[Frosty]

We'll see now how much BMT they have with 3.5 mind to play

Edited June 18, 2016 by geraldm24

[HappyMartin]

The lions are playing well????

[scotty]

Still work to be done but better 2nd half.