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For better or worse, the Pieter de Villiers era has come to an end. Many felt at the time of his appointment that Heyneke Meyer was the best candidate, and now four years later he will get his opportunity to prove them wrong.
With the international season taking a bit of a breather, I thought some informative statistics would be interesting. I am looking at the home record of the top nations, seeing when was the last time they lost a home test to each of the other nations.
I would think any nation would expect at least a 75% home win record as the minimm standard to attain. anything less would mean your home ground advantage counts for very little and travelling teams do not find it a daunting task to tour.
After some careful thought about the repercussions a team has to face, due to foul play by individuals in a team, who in most cases really aren’t dirty players and what it actually means for a team to play with 14 men for either 10 minutes and in some cases anything up to 80 minutes, it is clear in my opinion that it needs to be re-assessed.
Modern rugby with all its complexities and the number of people involved with the game today can be compared to modern society in many ways.
So the world cup is over, and what have we learnt?There were some controversial issues, some very close matches and some really angry fans.
From a South African perspective the rugby calendar makes little sense. The way the international fixtures are currently set out does not really allow for any competition to run its course to completion, it has therefor been proposed that there will be a break in the Super Rugby competition next year to allow the June tour window, and then the Super Rugby competition will resume. In between all this, there is a Currie Cup that will now take a further step back to accommodate the Super Rugby and International fixtures.
This is a satirical look at South african rugby, it is not intended to offend anyone, so please read it with the intent in which it was written.
Controversy due to inconsistent refereeing has somewhat marred a homecoming of the Rugby world cup to its original host of 24 years ago and the home of the most successful rugby side in rugby Union history.
Got this from my brother and thought you guys would enjoy this immensely.
Following on from GrootBlouSmile’s article about South African rugby’s next step. Here is my input.
There are four main pillars to society, it establishes an order out of the chaos, the same can be said for rugby, this is perhaps the four major pillars of Rugby Union.
John Smit was born on 3 April 1978 in Pietersburg, he went to Pretoria Boys High where he was head prefect and played for the first XV from 1996 to 1998. As natural born leader he was destined to become captain of the Springbok team and was identified at a very young age by Jake White, making his debut for South Africa against Canada at the tender age of 22. Since his debut in 2000 John Smit has played 111 test matches for South Africa, captaining his country on 83 occasions. South Africa won 69 of the 111 tests in which John Smit represented his country, he captained South Africa 83 times winning 54 tests.
I have been pondering the possibility of the Springboks being able to win this world cup, and after having seen the amount of criticism they have received (which is par for the course) I started to falter in my belief.
So the die has been cast and the quarter finals match-ups have been decided.
Some key moments in the game.
I was watching Namibia play their 4th Test match against yet another very tough opponent in only 14 days (17 days from Rugby World Cup kick-off), in their run on 15 for this match there are only 6 players making a living on rugby, and the only player that can be seen playing for a truly professional high quality outfit is Jacques Burger the Namibian captain.
So, we are halfway through the Pool stages and already the tournament has been turned on its head. There are still a few important and path-changing matches left.
Rampant Pierre Spies
When it comes to results in pool matches during the rugby world cup, I for one rather look at how and what teams have done and what has been effective.
I feel somewhat relieved to see that South Africa is for once amazingly not be the target of ridicule and mockery, but on the other hand mildly frustrated. Here are some excerpts from some “Expert” opinions on the New Zealand Herald panel regarding this weekend’s play.
South Africa’s three greatest exponents of line out play and masters of the tight phases are now injured.
Bokke!
It is often said that combinations are key to winning rugby. Now this article is mostly about statistics, so if you are not a statistic minded person it would most likely bore you to death, I did however find some telling stats looking at which combinations seemed to have worked for the Springboks.
World Cup 2007 Celebrations
The RWC is now imminent, it is there for important to prepare now rather than a day before the event. I thought it wise to set out a preparation guide and some rules to follow during this epic event. Continue reading
I have a lot I want to say about the upcoming Rugby World Cup (RWC) in New Zealand, and specifically about the Tri-Nation teams, I don’t pretend to be an expert on the Northern Hemisphere teams as I do not know their best players, or those fighting to become the first choice.
I often hear the old cliché “we want to play heads up rugby”. What the hell, a meerkat does that, he sticks his head out to survey the threats of nature. Then he runs, away, not forward into the danger zone.
This may shed some light on what is going on behind the scenes at SARU. Source Parliamentary Monitoring Group. A delegation of SARU presented a report of the preparation of the Springboks for the RWC.
It is often said class is permanent , but form is temporary.
In relationships we often find ourselves in a situation where we are hanging on to something we know has been over for a quite some time.
Many years ago I read a book written by Org Mandino, called “The greatest salesman on earth”.
I wrote this article on Sunday for another web site, and thought the guys on Rugby-Talk wouldn’t want to hear how good the All Blacks are, but seeing that superBul provided us with such an enlightening article about the infringements at the breakdown, I thought I’ll put my 2 cents in.
I was reading the team of the week selection by Planet rugby the other day and it made me wonder what the depth was in each of the three Tri Nations countries, and also which positions they have sufficient depth.
Refereeing is and will always be a thankless task. Rugby is the one sport that allows our primal instincts to run havoc with our emotions. The brutal tackles, runs and physicality dictates that rugby provides us with an alternative to modern warfare where at the end of a match there may be some serious injuries, but there is no intent to kill or maim.
Halfway through the first Super XV rugby season if you told me we would have three teams in the top half of the Combined Log, I wouldn’t have believed it.
The Stormers started the season well, The Bulls started off and narrowly beat the Lions and Cheetahs, the Sharks looked like they were trudging through thick mud, and well the Cheetahs and Lions looked like they were once gain going to fill the bottom of the Log.
With less than 90 days to go before the Springboks have to defend their title in New Zealand and the squad reduced to 37, the debates will start flowing towards which players are currently out of form and will really need to start showing some willingness and ability to appease the supporters on whether they deserve to go to the World Cup. Continue reading
Although I have said many times that I do not like the new format of Super Rugby, be it due to the unevenness of not playing all the teams in the Competition and playing local derbies twice, it still does make for interesting reading going into the final two rounds of Competition.
When looking at the SA conference and ignoring the matches against overseas teams, our conference make for interesting reading.
I thought it would be interesting to have a look at our conference as a unit on its own, comparing our local derbies only. Continue reading