How Jannie Du Plessis and Gurthro Steenkamp saw the Argentina scrum

There are two things that we can take from the second round of the Rugby Championship 2014.

1. The All Blacks are clearly not ‘on the slide’. In fact if anything they are on the up and up and all the 12-all draw did was to inspire them to dick punch the Wallabies in their faces, hard.
2. The Pumas’ ‘Bajada’ scrum is a thing of beauty, unless you are the Springboks, then it is a thing of nightmares.

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The Bokke are still leading the log with two wins but realistically it is once again the All Blacks that will be the team to beat this year which, judging on last Saturday’s performance, is going to be incredibly difficult.

The All Blacks were on fire in every department but most importantly, their forwards manhandled the Wallaby pack in the scrums and breakdowns. Slow clap guys. Way to make the rest of the rugby world look decidedly average.

Let’s crack on though I say, as we take a look back on round 2 and see who impressed, who disappointed and who sucked the big one.

The Good

The Pumas scrum was near unstoppable on Saturday in Salta and this current team looks like it is enjoying every minute of each scrum. So what is this Bajada scrum?

It is basically the way the Pumas scrum and specifically the way they execute it. The forwards bind with their external arms around the prop’s hip rather than between their legs, all the power is directed into the hooker and there is a coordinated push which is controlled by a 3 part call by the scrummie. Doesn’t sound too complicated but when they get it right, opposition scrums are made to look pretty ordinary.

The All Black team proved once again that when on song, they are near impossible to beat. They played a complete game, with slick passing, running into space and quality off loads the order of the day.

The forwards’ interplay with the backs was seamless and they continue to place the opposition under immense pressure with accurate kicking. All in all their performance was sheer magic to behold.

The Bad

The Springbok tight five were embarrassed at scrum time and not much better in general play.

Lood de Jager, is still finding his feet and will improve but 6 missed tackles is just not good enough. The front row were decidedly poor and it is clearer than ever that both the Du Plessis brothers have been poorly managed and have been overplayed (thanks for nothing Jake White).

Eben Etzebeth is not yet match fit but will get better and at least stole a couple of lineouts but a big improvement will be required when they face the Wallabies and the All Blacks in the next few weeks.

The Wallaby halfback pairing makes the bad list this week with both Kurtely Tache Beale and Nic White having games they would rather forget.

Nic White was very fortunate not to be yellow carded for cynical play but to be honest, that probably would have aided the Wallabies as everything he touched turned to poo. Beale was not much better and the fact that he doesn’t defend in his channel when oppositions are attacking is a sign that he sucks defensively, which he proved by missing nearly half the tackles he attempted.

The Springbok defense was worse this week than last. Damian de Allende is clearly struggling at second centre and is not marshaling the defensive line as he should be.

He has missed 4 tackles in the first two rounds. Juan Smith, usually defensively awesome, was nowhere on Saturday and missed 3 tackles and Cornal Hendriks had his first poor game defensively.

Generally the Bokke have been very good defensively under Meyer but this year, not so much and a big step up is required post haste!

The Ugly

The Springbok scrum was a total shambles.

Gurthro Steenkamp looks over the hill and Trevor Nyakane must surely be given a proper run at loosehead in order to back up the Beeast.

In the tighthead it is not as clear cut as Frans Malherbe who looked good in the second half is now out for the season after fracturing his ankle.

Adriaan Strauss is currently in far better form than Bismark and needs to start ahead of him but regardless, scrum coach Pieter de Villiers will have his hands full in the next couple of weeks, good luck buddy.