SA v Ireland test 2

The Boks are after Matty Williams now becuase he questioned the 6-2/7-1 bench

Neither Nohamba nor Masuku is in the squad. You are probably looking at a backline of Vd Berg/Williams, LibbokFeinberg-Mngomezulu, Mapimpi, Esterhuizen, Am, Edwil Van Der Merwe and Fassi/Feinberg-Mngomezulu as the backline if they change the 23 for the next match. I am not sure he can change the whole 23, maybe the starting 15 with some of the bench getting some starting minutes.

If you look at the current squad and the players outside of the World Cup starters there isn't a lot of experience there. I do not expect a lot of the starters from yesterday to make the next WC but the next player up is low on caps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_national_rugby_union_team#Current_squad

As an example this is the players in the current squad (outside of those that was involved in the World Cup final last year and Marx, who would have been in the 23 without a doubt) and their caps,

Grobelaar (hooker) - 0

Wessels (hooker) - 0

Koch (34 years old - prop) - 51

Steenekamp (prop) - 2

Jason-Dixon (lock) - 1

Moerat (lock) - 4

Buthelezi (loose forward) - 0

Roos (loose forward) - 6

Van Den Berg (scrum half) - 0

Reinach (34 years old - scrum half) - 32

Williams (scrum half) - 10

Feinberg-Mngomezulu - 2

Am (30 years old - centre) - 35

Esterhuizen (30 years old - centre) - 17

Mapimpi (33 years old - wing) - 42

Van Der Merwe (wing) - 1

Fassi (fullback) - 3

So take out the players 33 and older and that is a total of 80 caps of which Am and Esterhuizen has 52 of them. They will need to get the younger players into the squad soon to build up their experience, which should in turn mean a drop-off in results. So Rassie going from 65% currently to about 60%, which is about normal for a SA head coach winning record.

The problem with the 6/2 or 7/1, if you get early injuries, especially in the backs, it totally throws out of kilter what you want to do. Add in injuries in the forwards it made it impossible to have a bomb squad.

Seems little point to play the WC final team in these 2 tests when most of them will not be around in 3 years time.🙂

Great end to a very good season. Bringing through Crowley, Nash, Joe Mc, Osbourne and I’d add Frawley, is a very tidy bit of coaching. Blade also impressed under insane pressure. I can see Frawley pressuring Crowley next season, he was excellent in SA. Only bit of pissing I’ll do on the parade is that I thought Connor was glacial in the first 20 and we were lucky Ezebeth’s rhythm was interrupted by his injury as he was eating up the ground it gave him. CM seemed to revert to an old habit of taking one or two lateral steps and pumping before releasing his passes. Drove me crazy.

Huge win. The idea that we came from behind and won the final 20 minutes in SA without an absolute rake of important players is seriously impressive. Farrell must be an incredibly effective coach and leader for that group of players.

Healy, Herring, Bealham, Baird, Blade, Frawley, McCloskey and Osborne….nobody would have given a line up with all of those players on the field a hope against a loaded SA team who have emptied the bench.

Probably said elsewhere but I thought there is huge credit due to the forward replacements. They didn't have the eye catching cameos of Frawley or even the noticeable contribution of Blade but they did their jobs and I think the scrum was improved with them on the field. They conceded one penalty where the AR penalised Bealham but, to my eye, Steenekamp had gone to ground first on that one. Baird genuinely looked like he wanted to murder the AR after that one. And then they locked out the key scrum inside their 22 to set up the game winning drive.

Most of us were somewhat indifferent to POM being a sub option but it genuinely worked out perfectly. Just when we were completely rattled and falling away, we had his introduction. He didn't do anything spectacular but he did all hit bits well and the side were clearly calmer after his introduction (in fairness it coincided with the return of Doris also).

I kinda do have an issue with it. He said he spotted nothing at the time. PSDT and DDA were roaring at him that there was obstruction. He was pressured into checking something that didn't happen after stating he saw nothing happen. He had been asked to check things previously and waved them away such as Crowley getting hit off the ball and the McCarthy non-offside.

And there are stranger things that have happened than a TMO then telling the ref that Doris motions into Kolbe and he needs to look at it. Absolutely nothing in it and a dive but we've seen bizarre decisions in the past.

I thought it was understandable and right that he checked something they were not happy with when it was related to a game winning drop goal. And to the TMO credit it was cleared up almost instantly. That's an example of the system working well.

In the Crowley incident, I thought I heard him confirming that it had been checked and there was nothing to address.

https://www.sarugby.co.za/match-centre/match-centre-detail/?id=671e8e5a-284c-43ea-9812-0c6bed3282f2

https://www.irishrugby.ie/live_matches/match-centre-south-africa-v-ireland-second-test/

Just from an analytical perspective, its interesting seeing the difference between Ireland's version of he stats versus South Africa's.

Take James Ryan for example: Ireland have him down for five carries for zero metres, whereas the Boks have him down for 21 metres from the same carries. In general, the Boks seem to have a more lenient or inflated measure for metres made (Doris goes from 57 to 108)

I also find it interesting how Irish stats can have Doris down for 4 tackles while the South African source has him down for 15. Its an odd discrepancy between the two.

Just an observation re: match stats.

Also notable was the complete silence from the TMO about the headshot on Doris in that final sequence. Likely red for Pollard and certainly a penalty for the win.

Must be from people who've never kicked (drop or otherwise) a rugby ball.

Been marinating on this for a few days, but I'm still perplexed as to why the McCarthy knock-on/offside penalty wasn't reversed. It could have been a massive moment if we had gone on to lose the game by 2 points.

The referee apparently couldn't hear the TMO. I'm not clear if the ref was aware that the TMO was trying to get his attention, and waved it away, or whether there were no comms. Even if it was the latter, the AR's have TMO comms and could have drawing the refs attention to it.

I don't have an issue with the initial mistake by the ref to call a penalty (they're only human), but it was absolutely clear and obvious on the replay that it was a bad call. For the on-field team to let it slide like that is baffling.

Anyone know what minute this was? I missed it entirely.

The ball very clearly hits the ground.

Some Refs encourage AR & TMO info & some are less enthusiastic. We have all seen multiple occasions where a Ref calls time off (for injuries, shoelace tying & foul play reviews etc).

Nothing prevents Dickson from calling time off while he listens to his TMO, he actively chose to ignore the TMO trying to tell him something. Had he stopped play, established secure comms, & listened to his TMO he could still have decided that he had made the correct decision in real time. Ignoring TMO info (and his ARs similarly), when the TMO was presumably trying to save his colleague from embarrasment, turned out poorly for Dickson. Frawley removed the sting that might have pained Dickson had it finished a 2 pt win for SA.

It was noticeable that all the weekend matches seemed to have the TMO voice feed muted except to the other officials. Couldn't possibly been a sign of guilty consciences ?.

Thought Berry, Amashukeli & Brace went very well in the other Tier 1 games.