South Africa's poor performance in SR

[Gena_ZA]

Next year will be the Stormers year and that is what keeps me going.
Glad I could add enormous value to this topic

 

[Big Ewis]

Next year will be the Stormers year and that is what keeps me going.
Glad I could add enormous value to this topic

I think you're set for at least one month with that post.

 

[TRF_stormer2010]

Some really interesting topics popping up here just now each deserving of it's own thread;

- the conditions of fanhood
- the existence of YHWH
- WP/Stormers, the perrenial underachievers, being due a good year, surely? Which for me is something akin to the 'gambler's fallacy'

 

[Icemn]

i blame politics and the springbok selectors... i can be the best flyhalf in the world but i will never play for the springboks, morne 1 trick pony steyn knows the stampkar gameplan, kick and chase, low-risk rugby SA plays, so there is no room for me and my high-risk running game... so im going overseas as there is no use in mt playing here... go for the money... point in case Gio Aplon, Goosen Potgieter etc etc

in NZ, all the players are evenly spead over all the regions and are all basically starting for the respective regions... in SA i know you have players sitting on the bench waiting while they should be starting... this might be the reason aswell....

rugby as a whole is evolving and SA for me is falling behind because of their conservative approve to the game... very "too" structured at times and only score when its on... a good eg of this is the baby boks... they play a running game and they are brilliant, they beat teams... but those baby boks fade out and the senior team is not as effective... because of the low risk rugby that is enforced by Heineken and his 1970s gameplan...

its simple... if you score tries you win... more often... so if your gameplan allows for tries to be scored you will win instead of suffocating the game on defence and hitting counter attacks on mistakes...

players selection is important, SA regions only have a few players per position and if those get injured, look at Ysterbeth at the stormers, if he was there the stormers would have been a better team...

im not a fan of experience... if a player is mentally strong enough at a young age to cope with pressure, who needs experience... as experience in sport is too basically keep calm under pressure, and that you learn over time... so I would play younger players and have one ou toppie for mentor-ship

i personally feel the cheetahs are making progress... give them a year or two... attack is good they just need to work on their defence... stormers are going downwards cuz of their heineken type approch to safe low risk rugby, defence 1st etc etc

but end of the day, everyone cannot play the same type of rugby... that will be boring... so thank you heinken

 

[TRF_stormer2010]

i blame politics and the springbok selectors... i can be the best flyhalf in the world but i will never play for the springboks, morne 1 trick pony steyn knows the stampkar gameplan, kick and chase, low-risk rugby SA plays, so there is no room for me and my high-risk running game... so im going overseas as there is no use in mt playing here... go for the money... point in case Gio Aplon, Goosen Potgieter etc etc

in NZ, all the players are evenly spead over all the regions and are all basically starting for the respective regions... in SA i know you have players sitting on the bench waiting while they should be starting... this might be the reason aswell....

rugby as a whole is evolving and SA for me is falling behind because of their conservative approve to the game... very "too" structured at times and only score when its on... a good eg of this is the baby boks... they play a running game and they are brilliant, they beat teams... but those baby boks fade out and the senior team is not as effective... because of the low risk rugby that is enforced by Heineken and his 1970s gameplan...

its simple... if you score tries you win... more often... so if your gameplan allows for tries to be scored you will win instead of suffocating the game on defence and hitting counter attacks on mistakes...

players selection is important, SA regions only have a few players per position and if those get injured, look at Ysterbeth at the stormers, if he was there the stormers would have been a better team...

im not a fan of experience... if a player is mentally strong enough at a young age to cope with pressure, who needs experience... as experience in sport is too basically keep calm under pressure, and that you learn over time... so I would play younger players and have one ou toppie for mentor-ship

i personally feel the cheetahs are making progress... give them a year or two... attack is good they just need to work on their defence... stormers are going downwards cuz of their heineken type approch to safe low risk rugby, defence 1st etc etc

but end of the day, everyone cannot play the same type of rugby... that will be boring... so thank you heinken

Some valid points but I keep getting side-tracked by your use of 'you', 'they' etc for SA and 'us', 'we' etc when refering to NZ. Now I know you support NZ rugby teams ahead of SA's but surely you see yourself as South African?

Getting to your points;

As for refering to high risk rugby. We have Le Roux at 15 and have had Habana at 11 for ages. These are pretty high risk players. Oosthuizen at 3 is another high risk player. Then there is the youth HM has been backing; Serfontein, Ppollard, Goosen when fit; it's not Hm's fault Goosen has been forever injured. Add Lambie on and off and not bringing more than Steyn and who else was there besides Morne Steyn these last few years? No-one and HM has actually gotten some bloody good rugby out of Steyn who is not the player he was in the PdV days if you are being fair and honest. Aplon has had chances at test level (17 caps) but he has- apart from the 1 game against france here where we were winning well in any case- been found wanting at test level. Just look at 'your' NZ backs and tell me who comes close to Aplon's size? Even Cory Jane is 13kgs heavier than Aplon and has a mean hand off for a smallish guy.

You point on player distribution in NZ being more even than in SA is fair. I would love it if we could do something similar but the sad reality is that SARU has nowhere near the control over the frnachizes (in SA's case provinces) that the NZRU do with their central contracting so our unions are totally independent which means market forces come into play and the stronger unions ('big 3') will grab the few star players Europe/Japan don't.

Scoring tries don't necessarily translate into wins. Case in point; Sharks at the top of the SA conference scoring the fewest tries and Cheetahs scoring the most tries at the bottom of the SA conference. What scoring tries do get you though is bonus points which is where SA teams do suffer and can look to adapt even if we don't carry everything from SR over to the test team. The SA teams have had a horrid year it's true but had fantastic years (as a conference) in 2012 and 2013. We got the wins then but still sufered because of the bonus points though our advantage was 2 weak teams in-conference. Not fair but it's the reality. This year, counting draws as 1/2, NZ had 43 wins, Aus 40 wins and SA 37 wins. Poor, yes but not as devastatingly poor as suggested by the overall log and that is down to bonus points not the wins in themsleves as much.

I don't know how much I agree with you regarding your point on player selection where actually you are talking about depth which the Sharks have more than any team bar the Chiefs IMO. Stormers and Bulls not far off either. True the Cheetahs and Lions are paper thin on experienced players but that has been addressed. I don't think 1 player even as good as Etzebeth can make that much of a difference over a season. The problem for the Stormers was more the sheer number of injuries throughout and you simply can't have 50+ star players on the books.

I'm not sure where you are going with your remark on experience? fact is the SA sides (bar the Sharks) were the ones fielding the least experienced teams this year if you
SR caps and average ages. And which SA team got through? Only the Rebels had less SR caps and they ended stone last!

Cheetahs on the up, give them a year or two? Seriously? They made the play-offs last year and were fortunate not to end as wooden spooners this year and are losing some of their star players. Stormers do have to look at their game though, I agree. Not so much because it's boring but because of wear on the players leading to being consistantly the team carrying the most injuries resulting in inconsistency in team selection.