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Saturday, 6 August: Springboks v New Zealand

The people that make the decisions for the ABs don't have a bloody clue. Any SA supporter who is confident about SA's chances at the World Cup, should really EXPECT to win both games by 15+... And I'd be surprised if they don't, but I don't know as much about the SA team.
Mmm...
 
puts on hot take hat/
Sam Cane doesn't look like a captain. You look at the other national captains and they all have an aura about them. They all give strong protagonist or antagonist vibes and Sam Cane looks like a tertiary character.
 
puts on hot take hat/
Sam Cane doesn't look like a captain. You look at the other national captains and they all have an aura about them. They all give strong protagonist or antagonist vibes and Sam Cane looks like a tertiary character.
We know.

The problem comes with this hand-me-down system that the coaching team has taking on, and that should be COMPLETELY irrelevant in competitive sports. Loyalty is great, but such a longtime commitment to players that are out of form, or not the best at their position anymore in New Zealand Rugby is just ridiculous(See the Cane situation, or how about Laumape, Beauden Barrett?). When McCaw was captain, Sam Cane was slated as "the next big thing and captain.", and form, leadership, and ability in comparison to everyone else who plays openside flanker in the international game of rugby has been completely looked past... When you look at past captains of New Zealand Rugby, Kieran Read, Richie McCaw, even when Sam hasn't played it has been Ardie Savea, Whitelock, Retallick(I think?)... And the hilarity about this is, I would honestly take Savea, Whitelock, and Retallick over Sam Cane. Whitelock has been in the All Blacks since 2010, and there has really been ZERO issue about him holding his position in a black jersey. Sam Cane being the best openside flanker in New Zealand has been a debate for at least the last 5 years. Was there EVER a debate about McCaw, or Read, Whitelock, Retallick? No... No international team is worried about Sam Cane pilfering the ball, the suggestion is comical, and even playing at 6 or 8, the threat is Savea, and it has been for years. When we need someone to step up, it is always Savea, when we are getting pumped defending the try line, it is always Savea with some "how the f--- did he do that" moment... I do think it should be Savea as captain, but the logistics and politics make that seem rather unlikely.

"Ian Foster praises ABs: 'Our most improved performance of the year"

Look at this rubbish. It's like we're Australia or Scotland.............. Come on now... We've been "rebuilding" at a minimum since 2019, and there is at least 3 teams in the world better than New Zealand right now.
 
puts on hot take hat/
Sam Cane doesn't look like a captain. You look at the other national captains and they all have an aura about them. They all give strong protagonist or antagonist vibes and Sam Cane looks like a tertiary character.
Agreed….and it leads to other imbalances in our loosies. We shoot ourselves in the foot every week selecting came of we're determined to start savea too, I think savea 7 and sotutu 8 or cane 7 (different captain) and savea on the bench would work better

Full credit to South Africa though, teams can have rough patches but the other tram still needs to turn up and take advantage and South Africa did just that
 
Happy for the win but there is still a lot of room for improvement for us. Pollard won't be as accurate every game and both tries came from NZ errors. That said the defense was spirited and we kept it up throughout though with a bit of luck NZ could easily have turned a break into another try and we didn't look like constructing our own tries. A team of that quality in better form would've taken us out despite our bullying.
 
To be clear, his job was to analyse the boks AND advise what to do about it in terms of attack.
I wonder if that was part of the problem - trying to implement a new way of attacking in a short period of time. It would explain the handling mistakes. My surprise was more that NZ seemed ill-equipped to face a lot of big blokes who kick the ball a lot.
 
I wonder if that was part of the problem - trying to implement a new way of attacking in a short period of time. It would explain the handling mistakes. My surprise was more that NZ seemed ill-equipped to face a lot of big blokes who kick the ball a lot.
Yep, not having South Africa in super rugby will do that. It's not just kicking a lot, it's the nature of the chase they're not used to, and the nature of the kick being contestables that aren't just box kicks that go parallel to the sidelines and straight where expected. And the quality of the kick and chase
 
Happy for the win but there is still a lot of room for improvement for us. Pollard won't be as accurate every game and both tries came from NZ errors. That said the defense was spirited and we kept it up throughout though with a bit of luck NZ could easily have turned a break into another try and we didn't look like constructing our own tries. A team of that quality in better form would've taken us out despite our bullying.
I think you're being a bit harsh there. I thought the Boks in the first half looked as threatening as they have for a while with the ball in hand. You could have easily scored a couple more tries in the first 40. I never felt NZ looked like scoring, they looked like rabbits in headlights against the rush defence. Second half SA went more conservative but that's because they had a big enough lead to do that. I thought it was a good performance by the Springboks and certainly much improved from the Welsh series.
 
ABs worked hard. Boks were just awesome. precise error free mostly and patient. gamon ABs lets get the next one!!
 
I wonder if that was part of the problem - trying to implement a new way of attacking in a short period of time. It would explain the handling mistakes. My surprise was more that NZ seemed ill-equipped to face a lot of big blokes who kick the ball a lot.
Doesn't explain why our handling has been slowly getting worse over the last 2-3 years though
 
I think you're being a bit harsh there. I thought the Boks in the first half looked as threatening as they have for a while with the ball in hand. You could have easily scored a couple more tries in the first 40. I never felt NZ looked like scoring, they looked like rabbits in headlights against the rush defence. Second half SA went more conservative but that's because they had a big enough lead to do that. I thought it was a good performance by the Springboks and certainly much improved from the Welsh series.
yeah why wasnt aaronSmith hitting the 2nd and 3rd ball runner to negate the rush defence like he did in the first ireland game??
 
I thought the first two scrums were quite vital in setting the tone of the Test Match. Both involved secondary shoves, resulting in Bok penalties. This saw them them camp down the All Blacks end for an extended period, getting a nice lead and making AB's play catch-up.
 
yeah why wasnt aaronSmith hitting the 2nd and 3rd ball runner to negate the rush defence like he did in the first ireland game??
I had a similar thought. Hendrikse is three years removed u20s and is a young kitten out there in test rugby but he adjusted quite well to the task at hand.

Smith on the other hand just going plan a the entire time. You can't put all the blame on him but he didn't look like he was playing his 105th cap.
 
There were some moments in the first half where we looked ok, but ultimately some amazing turnovers at the breakdown and incredible defence, poor handling under pressure (or not playing deep enough), and poor timing were our downfall on attack.

Will be interesting to see if we can do anything to nullify the likes of Marx.
 
I assumed he had changed because hitting the second or third didn't work against Ireland…going straight to that pod is the most predictable things in rugby at the moment…use to be a weapon…now everyone k owns we're going to do it so have people waiting
 
Just saw a news article ***led "Pieter de colliers back in rugby". Don't need to read it - clearly it was about him being the new all blacks coach
 

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