saders
sharks
chiefs
reds
blues
Been thinking a lot about this round and our game. Think this wont be a popular opinion.
Stormers vs Jaguares, heart says Jags, but head says Stormers. Although what petite mentioned is true, it is also true that that statistic comes from a ridiculously high success rate in Australia/NZ and a mediocre one in south africa, and particularly bad against the Stormers. I think fixed formations will be key, and i see the stormers having an edge there. I see our attack being slightly better but their defence being considerably better.
One of the reasons our back 3 weren't exposed the last two seasons was because of the phenomenal job Orlando and de la Fuente (and occasionally Moroni) did on defense at the centre. They were always where they were supposed to be, they rushed their guy fast, hardly missed a tackle and got up and recovered very fast to support the back 3. That worked wonders the last 2 seasons and helped to cover holes in our defence. Well, that has not happened in 2020. I dare anyone here to show me a video of Boffelli making a try-saving tackle. Just one. He is a full back ffs.
Jaguares style with Quesada was nothing extraordinary. Cohesive defence, no silly mistakes, a lot of pressure, wait for the opponent to make a mistake, make him pay. Repeat. Get the fundamentals right, leave the fancy stuff for when we are 3 tries ahead. We copy-pasted the Lions' driving maul thingie, fixed a mayor scrum issue and then had a something strong to bring to the table.
But, look at the the first building block again: if our defence is not strong our entire style will collapse.
Jaguares' strengths and weaknesses are crystal clear if you look at our seasons: Offensively, our first two seasons were the best. Yet our defence was a disaster and we ended up not even qualifying.
Our last two seasons a ridiculous amount of our points came from forcing the opposition to commit errors as opposed to creating the chances ourselves (hope the difference is clear). That led us to the final. We need to tweak things here and there to adjust for the opposition and new players, but what works and what doesn't.
We were a team of few mistakes that transformed others' into points. Now the Reds scores us three tries in 30 minutes. At home.
My main concern before the season started was lacking the strength to break the advantage line that Matera and Lavanini brought to the table. That is not even in my top 3 concerns now.
I really, really wish i am wrong about half of this.