After reading the player ratings in Rapport and on Rugby365 and elsewhere, I could not find a writer who felt the same as the other or whom I agreed with…. so, here’s my Bokke player ratings.
Forwards:
1. Wian du Preez – 6: Wian was solid enough in a make-shift tight five and the make-shift forwards pack. Scrumming was always going to be a problem, even for the best props in a Team where scrummaging is’nt deemed important enough and with very limited time to gel as a tight 5 unit in the scrums. He carried the ball up well and was busy in loose play.
2. Adriaan Strauss – 6: He is an industrious hooker and the same scrummaging sentiments apply to him as would apply to Wian.
3. John Smit – 5 at prop, 7 at hooker: John is a hooker… I’ll say it again… he is a FREEGIN HOOKER, not a tight head prop. John only came to his rights as a player in the last 20 minutes when he reverted to hooker. His throwing into line-outs is solid, his scrumming at hooker very good.
4. Bakkies Botha – 7: Bakkies is always dependable and strong.
5. Andries Bekker – 7: He is definately a No 5 lock, not a No 4 enforcer lock and seems to have learned a lot from Victor on Tour. He has been one of the better Bokke on Tour.
6. Heinrich Brüssow – 8: The man is a genius, the world’s best opensider by a mile. He stole ball when it mattered, he tackled well. The BEST BOK ON TOUR!
7. Danie Rossouw – 6: A mixed bag for Danie, he was better when moved to No 8, he is not a blindside flank but makes a good make-shift No 8, better at No 8 than Kankowski by miles.
8. Ryan Kankowski – 4: He had a good first few minutes when the game was loose and assisted in the 1st try but as soon as it got tight up front, he was nowhere. He is a disapointment and one of the worst Bokke on Tour. He needs to be dropped totally to regain form in next year’s Super 14.
Backline:
9. Fourie du Preez – 8: The general, the maestro…. the best scrum half in the world. He scored one try and made one for Wynand Olivier. I run out of expletives when I describe his value to the Bokke.
10. Morné Steyn – 6: A mixed bag for Morné, apparently they use a very different type of ball in Italy, which would explain why he initially struggled with place kicks but when he came right it was the Morné of old. No problems in his tackling or distribution skills.
11. Bryan Habana – 8: He was hungry for the ball, went looking for work and opportunities, scored a try and had a huge hand in Fourie du Preez’ try. A very good day at the office for Bryan.
12. Adi Jacobs – 4: Not on standard, he misses tackles, gets lured out of the defensive lines easily, runs laterally. Poor Tour and he’s a poor player at present. He needs to be dropped in total and concentrate on gaining form in the Super 14 next year.
13. Jaque Fourie – 7: Jaque is a stalwart in the team, scored a good try, defended well… and he combines so well with Habana and Fourie du Preez.
14. JP Pietersen – 5: Very quiet day, does not look for work like Habana, lazily chases kicks and seems to be resting on his laurels a bit.
15. Zane Kirchner – 7: He was solid in the last vestage, always nicely in position, takes the high ball well and mostly takes the correct options.
Bench:
Tendai (Beast) Mtawarira – 7: Beast was solid when he came on. With John at hooker and BJ at No 3 they scrummed well.
BJ Botha – 8: What a difference a good tight head, who is used to European standards makes!! He needs to RETAIN THE TIGHT HEAD POSITION ! With John Smit reverting to hooker next to him the scrums went well. This is what we want on tight head.
Victor Matfield – 8: He makes a huge difference at scrum time and is hugly underrated as a scrummaging lock. He tackles well and off course reigns supreme in line-outs in the world.
Jean Deysel – 8: He should have started the Test and was very valuable when he came on (and Kankowski left the field) at a stage when the Italian forwards were setting the pace. Things swung around in the forwards department partly due to him at blindside and Danie reverting to No 8. I Hope the selectors took serious notice of this improvement!
Wynand Olivier – 8: What a difference it makes to have someone solid at No 12 who knows the players around him well. Seeing as he instinctively knows every move that Fourie du Preez or Morne Steyn or Habana or Zane would make, makes him the logical choice going forward. He is a solid defender and runs good support lines, as was indicated in his try off the shoulder of Fourie du Preez. He needs to replace Adi Jacobs.. please, please, please let this happen.
Ruan Pienaar – 6: Ruan did nothing wrong on Saturday. Pity that his form has taken such a dump due to him being shifted from pillar to post as far as positions are concerned. Ruan needs to specialise at No 9, making that his only focus going forward.
Francois Hougaard – Not enough game time to rate him properly: These 4 minutes meant his Bok debut in Tests.
#118 – just trying to get the hype going mate. I am one who doens’t think we will win the war but hey we are quite good with the battles. So you support Ireland when the Boks are not playing! Good on you. Keep it green mate.
I think now is the Irish’s best chance if ever they are going to win the Boks, but that being said……………Boks are going to slaughter you 🙂
I recon the Bokke should play reasonably well this weekend… they all know this is the last match of the year for them (bar the Baabaa’s match on 5 Dec for 3 players)… so they’ll want to put in one last good showing before going for a proper rest phase.
Last year with the same at hand we pummelled the silly Pommies senseless… fattup…. moertoe!
Farkkkkkkkk, what are we going to do without ruggas for 2 whole months??
123 ja maar die pommie dreck was nie die 6N champs nie hoor hehehe maar ja ek stem ons behoort die Oirish op te voeter
124 hehehe xmas carols sing? sal maar crikcet moet kyk
124 – GBS
The cricket will have to keep us going like it did last December. Not the same as rugga but it should be good. Hoping not like we played on Sunday. Need to up the tempo like we done in the 20/20 last Friday night.
See we playing England at Newlands this Friday. Hope no rain there. Also tough a day night game at Newlands. Normally the team that bats first wins there. Not always but most of the time.
118 – Mieliepap 😆 ‘The Boks run a real risk of drowning if the scrum goes down’ hahahaha. Had a good laugh there. Is the weather that bad there at the moment? Irish did say there was plenty rain.
I just rememeber the semi final against France in Durban in the 1995 world cup. Thought all the players could have drowned there. Never seen a game played with so much water on the field. Like a mud bath that day.
127 @ Puma – I am angry at the Proteas and they’ve dampened my will to watch cricket a bit… at least beginnig December there is still the George 7’s….
In December I should have more time, after 20 December, to do a few tweaks here on the blog, as far as development goes… also build in the full League Feature, so we can have our own “SuperBru-like” Competitions… get our Online R-T Store going for the sale of R-T Rugby Shirts, an R-T Range of wines…. and some other merchandise……
Then there are certain alliances with a certain very well known Sports Magazine which must be taken up… after some preliminary informal talks which looked very promising…
Also want to associate with quite a few sportswear maunfaturers who supply rugby gear… ect…
I have big things in the head… for the road ahead!
Very wet at the mo, in parts of the UK there have been heavy floods with 900 houses flooded. Don’t know about Southern Ireland now – where I was last week was wet but not flooding.
Its crazy – when it doesnt rain the ground gets rock hard so when it does run the ground cant absorb it as its like hitting cement. Then after a few days it does absorb some water but becomes saturated quickly and so when it rains it fllods again – no middle ground. In club games I have been in you get 2 or 3 inches of water in puddles cause the fields are full of potholes. Worst of all is it gets very cold and to go splashing through an icy puddle is no fun at all.
Just from your ratings I pick up your team average is 67% whereas I reckon the Boks deserve nothing more than 50.
There are about 4 or 5 guys that would have scored a 6 from me, with perhaps just one or two a 7.
131@ Morné -If it makes you happy, adjust everybody 1 point down…. to me it was more a matter of the comparative scores of players compared to one another, than comparing them against a point out of 10… or perhaps more correctly, giving them a score out of 10 in the context of 1 game, rather than measured against what their true worth would be over the year’s performances.
We won, so more than 50% was my measure, to start with…
Maybe I should have included a measurement scale… according to how I marked the players… hehe
129 – GBS Sounds good to me. Get us our own RT competition going that would be great. You have some good ideas there boet. This blog is already doing well with the videos too.
Ag, The cricket always let us down just when you think they are going to blow the other team away. They played brilliant in that last 20/20 game and yesterday was a let down.
Yes looking forward to the 7’s. Really got into watching it last year.
I find it funny how the media and the Blue Bulls fans in general are not rating Morne Steyn on his performance and on loyalty. The best rating came from rugby365. There’s nothing worse than a fly-half who is hesitant, and I agree with rugby365 there Morne Steyn was hesitant on Saturday. Missing 3 kicks at goal is simply not good enough, and don’t use the ball as an excuse these are professional rugby players. Like Pienaar’s performances in the midweek games wasn’t up to scratch Morne’s performances in the tests wasn’t up to scratch.
Somehow the real rugby geniuses in the current Bok line-up finds a way to continue putting in star performances after a long season. Heinrich Brussow, and Fourie du Preez just remain sensational players. I still think Fourie du Preez sometimes kicks the ball a tad too much, but he certainly makes up for it when he decides to run.
Pienaar played well when he came on. The way Steyn was playing you could’ve easily had him on at half-time… But with his midweek performances that wasn’t going to happen.
I think Steyn should spend less time practicing goal kicking with Ruan Pienaar…
130 – Mieliepap. You need to come and live back in SA. The weather here is great.
We also had freak weather last week. It snowed on the Berg. November!!! Was crazy weather felt like we were in winter.
See the floods on TV over there. Not good when there are so many floods must cost people thousands, if there houses are ruined because of it. If I lived there would always live on the higher ground.
134@ Straatie – Hey… see the glass as half full, not as half empty, bro…
I mean, for goodness sakes, you rate Burton Francis…. hehehe
You can’t write off a player who doesn’t get enough game time during the season. He showed class in the Vodacom Cup and other age group games I saw him play. He’s at his best attacking he gainline, glad he left the Bulls because our fly-halves generally doesn’t know that concept. They just know how to kick.
Kicking is an art. There’s only one way to master it. Practice! practice! practice! practice!
137@ Straatie – Personal opinions are like arseholes… everybody’s got one, me included!
Comparing the ratings from Rapport, Rugby365 and one other was like these people all saw a different game from the one I saw…. I had a good giggle at Rapport’s ratings….
Rapport’s ratings was absolutely crazy. We played Italy not New Zealand…
#139 dit het ook baie te doen met wie die ‘experts’ is hehehehe, party is maar erg deurmekaar
I think the ratings are spot on. Don’t think our problem is at 10 for Saturdays game, but at 12!
142@ bloupiet – Fanks, I also thought so…. hehehe
#142 Definitely Bluepete…..Please let him choose WO, BOD is going to kill Adi
Like he killed Jean de Villiers… 😉
GBS u got mail
cant even compare Adi and JdV
Jean de Villiers is one overrated player. Would’ve kept Frans Steyn first choice inside-centre after the 2007 rugby world cup he certainly deserved his place. Jean de Villiers at Munster looks like he doesn’t know where he is… O’Driscoll made him look like a fool…
So then what do you think he is going to do with Adi? craziness I tell you, WO should have been starting this whole tour!!!
146@ Tripples – Nothing yet… but my ISP’s mail server’s been farking around all day…. send again, to the webmaster@rugby-talk.com addie, please.
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