Springboks still not getting it

The Springboks suffered their first defeat in the rugby championship this year when they went down 26-19 to Australia. The Springboks seemed to have the game under control at half time with a superior kicking game, pinning Australia in their half for most of the period. The game changed however when Australia decided to keep the ball in hand which was a good plan seeing as though you cant score tries without the ball. Australia not in the best form of late still managed to beat us, what will happen against the All Blacks?

A great kicking performance from Morne Steyn, Zane Kirchner and Frans Steyn which counted for nil as we just gave them possession to run it back at us. Watching an interview with Naas Botha who had always been criticized for always kicking the ball, his reply was “have you heard of Danie Gerber?” Danie Gerber is known as one of if not the greatest Springbok centers of all time. Al though Naas was exceptionally good at kicking, he still needed to pass in order for the players around him to be so good which he did. In my mind a player that emulates Botha the most would be Johan Goosen, he has a great kicking game and can kick it from a mile away but at the same time likes to run with the ball and create chances for the players around him. You would have seen this when he made his Springbok Debut against Australia, he may only have played for 10 minutes but that was enough to see that he has heaps of talent and may be in line for a start sooner than we think.

The Springboks are under the impression that without the likes of Sonny Bill Williams and Daniel Carter New Zealand will be less of a threat, think again. They may be very influential players but let’s not forget they won the world cup without Dan Carter and at the time SBW on the bench. They have enough fire power in their current squad to embarrass us further. We shouldn’t be looking at them and who’s missing. We should be looking at ourselves and what we can do to improve from our poor performance against the Wallabies.

They have blamed inexperience for our poor performance and saying that we can’t expect them to perform with so many players that have left. I agree it is tough to have mostly a new team and perform. The question I ask is if you are forced to have a new squad why not put younger players in, that way they will play for longer and you won’t sit in the same position we’re in now in 4 years time. Robbie Deans did this when he became coach playing young players to build hid squad for the future. We should do the same before our wealth of young players decide to move overseas or get too old.