Has Patrick Lambie been set up to fail? Come give your view!

Published 22 November 2012 | By Sharks_forever

I am even though I have tried to see this in a positive light, of the opinion that Lambie is being set up here to fail.

Since joining the Bok setup Lambie has been coached to play differently, and also one can see his kicking style has changed, as well as his tackling, another thing of course as mentioned he now stands deep in the pocket.

Now for me it is no use telling one player he can play his natural style and not the rest of his team mates who are not used to the style Lambie normally plays, bar of course one or 2 of the players.

If one looks at the forwards it is easy to see why a plain running rugby style struggles as the ball in phases are always slow as the tight 5 are not hitting a ruck as they should.

The looseforward trio, although playing well and defending well as a unit, are very slow in getting to breakdowns thus most of the ball has already been slowed down or been lost.

In the previous matches, to take Juandré Kruger as an example and as I re-watched the matches again, where one is not all nervous as to who is going to win et cettera, it was interesting to see how little this player was doing, how many tackles he missed (7 in 2 matches) and also how poor his attention to what his job was at the broken play.

By the way, on 3 of the 7 missed tackles it was Lambie who had to make the cover tackle for the tackle missed by Juandré.

Now getting to the backline, who again are nowhere and this is where my biggest concern is and why I have this feeling Lambie is being set up to fail.

Firstly the players in the backline are not honed in to play an attacking running game as has been seen so far, and all one has to do is break up the backline into individuals.

Zane Kirchner, all be it he has been secure on defense and the high ball, is not even an integral part of the backline. He never joins the backline and he never runs running lines to create overlaps, he never hits the line at pace thus leaving the backline a man short whenever they attack.

Wings cannot be blamed here, as it comes not due to the lack of coaching and although JP Pietersen does do this, one hardly sees Francois Hougaard do anything besides defend, who by the way is very poor under the high balls.

Centre play is a huge problem and it matters not how many passes Lambie makes, but if the ball is not passed further that the No 12, no move will be successful, Jean de Villiers just does not pass.

I do not really want to lay blame at the feet of Juan de Jongh here, as even though he is known as a ball hog too. He had his first match and actually played well but never received the ball to be able to pass it to the next player.

Now to scrumhalf, where Ruan Pienaar also seems to be under some form of coaching and under instruction to play a kick-and-chase game or who knows what.  Ruan, when he came on as a substitute in the English tour to South Africa series in June was in the situation that his service was snappy, yes he had faster service than Francois Hougaard and his option taking was good.

Suddenly Ruan is slow behind the srums and rucks and kicks 90% of possession away – and a kick one must remember is only as good as the chaser – and in the case of the past two Test matches it became an attacking weapon for our opponents against us.

Lambie is clearly very unsure as to his role and has looked out of place, something we don’t see when he plays for his provincial team, this also does not help towards flow in the backline.

There is also the problem of forwards in the backline and it is probably the biggest problem we have, as our forwards do not try attacking with off-loads and creative play, they all run to steam roller the defense in front of them, where they go to ground and ball is taken off them or slowed down.

I am sure if one looks more closely you would find more issues in our play, so how will one man in our team be able to make us a running rugby attacking team if it is not entreched in the whole team’s mindsets, and not an integral part of their style of play and drummed into them or being the style they play at their provinces?

This is the reason for saying Patrick Lambie is being set up, be it on purpose by the coaching staff or not, and to be very honest one can say the same for a few players in the Bok setup as one can’t see Juan de Jongh weave magic if he never gets the ball for example.

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