Gee a lot of reading to get through/
I actually think this conservative approach has hindered the Spring Boks in many ways. South Africa is the only country in the world that comes close to producing the quality NZ does in quality and quantity. I respect South Africa rugby a lot, but sometimes players have not being selected or allowed to play to their strengths because of this approach. It's not really sustainable to be completely reliant on your defense either. This can be very bruising, fatiguing and just not realistic, that is why The Stormers have failed to win the competition (and any other SA franchise apart from the Bulls), especially in years faced with a tougher draw, to not even make the play-offs.
Under Heyneke Meyer we tried the expansive approach, and had a variation of success. But with that said, I don't want to go into a debate about the springboks here, as there are a lot more factors to consider and has no application to the current topic at hand. But what I will say, and this is completely my own opinion and viewpoint, The reason the Stormers aren't champions yet is because of the large contingency of coloured (mixed race) people in their administration who was placed there for political reasons.
The Stormers were allowed to kill the ball, hold on, get away with murder at the breakdown by Peyper. There was a particular instance where the Stormers were beginning to amount attack when the game was still relatively close and they held on to the ball while Pocock was clearly over it and the player did not release, the Stormers then spread it wide and scored.
Oh okay, so that's your interpretation. Fair enough. My interpretation was that the Stormers did an excellent job of neutralising Pocock and adapting to the referee's calls more than the Brumbies. I also haven't read any article about Peyper and how he reffed the breakdown. All the focus was on the red card and Leyds' try (which was a TMO howler, not Peyper).
Look the Stormers tactically took it to the Brumbies and deserved the win more or less, but they were certainly giving a huge helping hand in that game and allowed to commit murder, the Brumbies punching that bloke was idiotic as well.
This just doesn't make sense. It just shows how one-eyed you are in your approach to this. More or less?? The Stormers didn't influence the referee, neither did the Brumbies. The Stormers didn't throw a punch, and you have to award Oli Kebble for taking 2 punches on the chin, and still playing on as if nothing happened. The Brumbies lost their cool, and they got punished. To harass your opposition is a tactic teams use, and it worked against the Brumbies. Once again, the Stormers boxed smarter than the Brumbies and got rewarded.
You also have to outscore your opposition by 3 tries, which means scoring 3 tries. The Stormers on average have scored 2.0 tries a game.
Attacking rugby is always going to win you more games than defensive rugby. I think the All Blacks are a good example of this and the number of franchise from NZ that have won the competition and/or nearly won it (Canes). The Bulls had a fine blend of attacking rugby and it's by far the most successful franchise from SA and the only franchise to win the competition. SA rugby needs to be more progressive thinking. There's no way the Stormers are a better side than the Crusaders.
The Bulls are the most conservative team in the history of Super Rugby. I should know, I support them. When we won the trophy, we had a dominant forward pack that mauled the living daylights out of the opposition.
We hardly played attacking rugby. We played 10-man rugby, and we won our games mostly due to penalties and the deadly boot of Morne Steyn. Look at the 2009 Semi-final against the Crusaders. The score was 36-23 in favour of the Bulls. But we only scored 3 tries. What made us good was our kicking game. Fourie Du Preez's box kicking along with Habana chasing them down, and Morne Steyn kicking it over from nearly everywhere.
But then the rules changed, and we (and by we, I mean all of South Africa) had no choice but to change our whole gameplan. We're still changing it, and other than the Aussie and NZ conference all of the SA teams have new coaches apart from Johan Ackerman. This proves that we are still adapting. Scoring tries is something that we want to improve on, and I'm all for that, but I would be damned if that influenced our way of defending. It's all well and good you can run from anywhere and score a try every now and again, but that doesn't help if your opposition can do the same, and you can't stop them.
Winning a game by 6 tries to 4 is the same as winning it without scoring any tries... You will still get just 4 points... If I was a coach I'd rather stick to a more defensive approach than attacking approach.
). Crusaders have a positive rate but not as positive of the Stormers rate.
