SA v Ireland test 2

Just saw the incident around 30 mins where Jesse Kriel runs straight into Jack Crowley off the ball, which splits Crowley’s nose.

Blatant and obvious - clear and easily seen. Crowley implores Dickson to review it, and he refuses. What is the TMO looking at there?

Ah now…

Not sure SA are such a good team , they are a physical team , Pollard kicks their points , they have two flying wingers ( when not slipping of course ) and a large heavy pack. They lack creativity - especially at 10 , 12, 13 . Seem to have a blinkered and aggressive game plan , which if one stands up to it nullifies the threat.

. Libok at 10 and their replacement 15 Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu have a spark in them all right though having won back to back world cups it’s perhaps understandable that they keep their one dimensional physical dominance game plan . However if you front up (as Ireland did ) there appears to be nothing else . The bombs squad are turning into a damp squib.

Think Rassie indicated he’ll change the whole 23 for Portugal.

I’m excited by Sanele Nohamba, the Lions 10. He is an excellent talent and absolutely electric to watch. Hope they give him a chance to start next week, and the Sharks 10 Siya Masuku had an incredible season too.

As I said on another thread, that XV that started yesterday had 13/15 players over 30 (and the other two are 28 years old) so they definitely have some transition to do over the next while.

I don't have any issue with Dickson checking obstruction at the end. It would be poor referring not to. And it was very quickly cleared.

Looking back the only really awful decision was the penalty against McCarthy for offside. And even then it was only because he ignored the tmo.

Obviously if Frawley hadn't scored at the end then my opinion would be different.

Neither Nohamba nor Masuku is in the squad. You are probably looking at a backline of Vd Berg/Williams, LibbokFeinberg-Mngomezulu, Mapimpi, Esterhuizen, Am, Edwil Van Der Merwe and Fassi/Feinberg-Mngomezulu as the backline if they change the 23 for the next match. I am not sure he can change the whole 23, maybe the starting 15 with some of the bench getting some starting minutes.

If you look at the current squad and the players outside of the World Cup starters there isn't a lot of experience there. I do not expect a lot of the starters from yesterday to make the next WC but the next player up is low on caps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_national_rugby_union_team#Current_squad

As an example this is the players in the current squad (outside of those that was involved in the World Cup final last year and Marx, who would have been in the 23 without a doubt) and their caps,

Grobelaar (hooker) - 0

Wessels (hooker) - 0

Koch (34 years old - prop) - 51

Steenekamp (prop) - 2

Jason-Dixon (lock) - 1

Moerat (lock) - 4

Buthelezi (loose forward) - 0

Roos (loose forward) - 6

Van Den Berg (scrum half) - 0

Reinach (34 years old - scrum half) - 32

Williams (scrum half) - 10

Feinberg-Mngomezulu - 2

Am (30 years old - centre) - 35

Esterhuizen (30 years old - centre) - 17

Mapimpi (33 years old - wing) - 42

Van Der Merwe (wing) - 1

Fassi (fullback) - 3

So take out the players 33 and older and that is a total of 80 caps of which Am and Esterhuizen has 52 of them. They will need to get the younger players into the squad soon to build up their experience, which should in turn mean a drop-off in results. So Rassie going from 65% currently to about 60%, which is about normal for a SA head coach winning record.

The problem with the 6/2 or 7/1, if you get early injuries, especially in the backs, it totally throws out of kilter what you want to do. Add in injuries in the forwards it made it impossible to have a bomb squad.

Seems little point to play the WC final team in these 2 tests when most of them will not be around in 3 years time.🙂

Great end to a very good season. Bringing through Crowley, Nash, Joe Mc, Osbourne and I’d add Frawley, is a very tidy bit of coaching. Blade also impressed under insane pressure. I can see Frawley pressuring Crowley next season, he was excellent in SA. Only bit of pissing I’ll do on the parade is that I thought Connor was glacial in the first 20 and we were lucky Ezebeth’s rhythm was interrupted by his injury as he was eating up the ground it gave him. CM seemed to revert to an old habit of taking one or two lateral steps and pumping before releasing his passes. Drove me crazy.