Defence and fitness lacking from Boks

Maybe the time has come for us to go back to basics, writes Peter Scrimgeour.

Iread this week’s Springbok players ratings in the newspaper. The best was 6/10 which I believe no one achieved. Strange that the fullback had the worst rating. The rating also forgot to add Rassie Erasmus and his team but then a negative score would not count.

Well, SA Rugby, the past has come back to haunt you. I remember all the discussions and criticism about Allister Coetzee, but we seem to forget who his director of coaching was.

Now Rassie has had the ball in his own court for six games, and what has he achieved? He has no game plan. He admits he knew Argentina’s plan but kept kicking overhead and giving the ball back to them. He has a flyhalf that can’t kick. His flyhalf forgot he has a first centre and his only action is to run back into the forwards.

His captain has forgotten to take available points (in fairness how does he do that when your kicker has a less than 20% success rate?).

Anyone can see that our lineout throw-ins no longer work, but we still go for touch on every penalty.

Your two centres have forgotten that 50% of the job is defence.

A centre’s job is not to support the forwards but the other way around.

Our penalty count in the scrums and loose is totally unacceptable.

Why are we keeping the best players for the last 20 minutes?

The art of attack is to place your opposition under pressure, to do that you need to move the ball quickly so that they do not have time to consolidate.

Our opposition can see we have no plan B and use it to their advantage. Maybe we should go back to the basics.

In 1995 and 2007, defence and fitness were supreme. That now seems forgotten.