I'm not one for conflict, and believe it's just as important to win with class than to lose with class....but I think this is one of those times....MAN UP AND ADMIT THAT THIS IS SOUR GRAPES.
That article about Guscott has been doing the rounds, not only on Wales online, but also other outlets. And to be honest, I'm perplexed by Guscott's remarks. Especially since he was full of praise of the SA team when he was a pundit in SA, and said that the bomb squad was used very well.
But to me, Guscott has a very short memory (probably the second shortest thing he has). As not long ago, a matchday squad consisted out of only 22 players, and not 23. And WR added an additional position on the bench, as every team must have an entire front row on the bench, to prevent things such as uncontested scrums from happening, and the props and the hookers are the guys that usually takes the most strain in a match because of the scrum.
So to me, this is a bit sour grapes. Guscott's narrow-minded approach isn't taking WR's approach to player safety into consideration at all. To limit it to 3 like in Soccer is just stupid, and the physicality of rugby should at no point be compared to soccer, which Guscott is indirectly saying.
The other thing is that this idea of him will increase the amount of injuries because players are pushed to exhaustion. And England would have been in bigger trouble as they went into the World Cup with 3 guys still nursing injuries. And then Depth would again become a topic.
I guess every pundit/ex-player/opinionated prick, whose team didn't win the Cup, will have an opinion as to how the game should be changed.
It happened in 2007, when we won, where everybody was writing about our boring style of play and the box-kicking of Fourie Du Preez and that we didn't play exciting rugby and that we are dull AF etc...
Then WR started chopping and changing rules/laws, introduced things like the ELV's and had different regions play under different rules, and look at ways to make the game more "exciting" as opposed to Springbok rugby.
12 years on, and we played exactly the same type of rugby as we did in 2007. Even with all the changes in rules/laws, yet, we played exciting rugby too, and is even on the top 5 list of most tries scored, points scored, defenders beaten and all those other stats involved with "attacking/running rugby".
Let them write their articles, let them ***** and moan and whinge and cry.
We have the cup. We won it fair and square. We played every game, regardless of the weather, opposition or whatever other excuse known to man.