Baby Bok coach, Dawie Theron, has his work cut out following his team’s hammering at the hands of Vodacom WP.
Vodacom WP scored 10 tries against the 2 of the Junior trialists in a one-sided 50-10 hammering at Bellville.
Theron, who previously said his team could go all the way this year in the Junior World Cup, will have a lot to correct and fix if he believes that to be a realistic goal.
It was however an important game for the youngsters, as Theron wanted to test his charges against bigger, more experienced opponents, but it also shows just how much work there is still to be done as the opponents in the Junior World Cup will arguably be more physical than a Vodacom Cup team.
“There’s lots of hard work ahead, but it’s not all negative,” said Theron.
“We wanted to play against bigger opposition and test our depth against a side like DHL Western Province. Our youngsters were up against the likes of JD Moller, Hilton Lobberts, Lionel Cronje, and Shuaib Samaai who has played in many national and international competitions already.
“Our entire squad had an opportunity to show us as coaches and the national selectors today what they are made of. Some guys impressed and others will probably have to work a lot harder if they intend staying in contention for the IRB Junior World Championships.
“We not going to single out any players at this point in time, but I am positive there is enough talent within this squad. The likes of our other age-group players on Super Rugby, Varsity Cup and Vodacom Cup duty will also still play a huge part in our planning going forward.”
Some of the areas Theron will have to spend a lot of attention on is the boys discipline (they conceded 21 penalties) and their physicality in contact (they conceded 5 tries from turn-overs).
“I told our players not to let their heads hang despite the defeat,” added Theron.
“We’ve still got a long road to travel and we can only get better from a game like this. We didn’t expect to beat DHL Western Province by 20 points. We came here to learn lessons of ourselves, and I believe that was achieved here today.”
Morne
I believe that the methods used to select schoolboys for further development is basically flawed and that this is part of the problem.
The “big” unions have their “Rugby” schools that they look at at traditionally pick their Craven Week teams from.
A youngster that doesn’t attend one of these schools has very little chance of ever being picked for any representative side and as such tends to drop out of Rugby.
The big flaw in this methodology is that tight forwards only develop into their full potential much later than other players. It’s basically a biological thing that can’t easily be changed by design.
Hence IMO it can really be that the better (or potentially better) tight forwards at age group level never get to see the light of day, and that the incumbents are perhaps the best of only a relatively small percentage of the players of their particular age group.
Hope it all makes sense.
Of course their is also an argument that schools Rugby from Grade 1 upwards is flawed in its coaching and selection methodology, but that’s far too long and complicated an issue for today.