The Wallabies give the Springboks a real rugby lesson

Jannie du Plessis. Tighthead prop and brother of Bismarck. Does not even look remotely like Jannie de Beer. No red hair, no freckless.

But as the commentators love to say, the kick is only as good as the chase. Pietersen we miss you say the Bok fans.

All this talk of ´Jannie´ (I am in brazil and havent been able to watch any games this year-bloody soccer! so I dont know who he is) reminded me of that old neanderthal-looking guy Jannie De Beer who kicked 100 drop goals one time!!! Talk about a lack of sportsmanship. Maybe he shouldve moved to England and played for them...

Absolute rubbish, are you blind or suffer from memory loss? My ears only just stopped ringing from the last 2 months whinging by the Aussie, please don’t be so self-righteous Gruffs. Everyone moans when their team loses, you only realise it when saffas do it. Its people like you and Spiro that pull it out of us with your little niggles off the ball. It's fine though Spiro has been exposed, its not only Saffa's that pointed out his bok hate. O yeah and the Wallas win one home game and they are on their way to greatness, please... Ill agree with you if they can win in NZ but one good game against a tired and uninspired team at your home ground does not make you "on your way" more like lucky.

Photon Problem is you Sth Africans seem to get all twisted up by any criticism. To say Spiro's criticism is "vindictive" is laughable. Not so long ago, Austalia's scrummaging was being lambasted by all commentators, Spiro included. But the Wallabies have brought this along nicely plus are now developing the rest of the team into a formidable outfit. The Boks are now tasting some defeat - and the whining, bitching reaction has been pathetic. Last weekend's victory signifies that Australia's run as a rugby powerr may be starting - and the might of the Boks may be waning. Every dog, even South African dogs, have their day.

Gruff, If you play in a league competiton the nature of it is you're not going to win every game, That's whay there's a log and the general assumption is the team at the top at the end of the competiton is the best, so just so you understand the whole point of a league is to circumvent dumb statements such as you're only as good as your last game. That's why it's not appropriate for Spiro to take one game and extraporlate over the entire competion. Ther Wallaby victory on Saturay doesn't make all the vindictive criticism of the Boks by Spiro right.

Robbo What a fatuous load of yarpie crap. Try this - you're only as good as your last game. I have seen a plethora of Wallaby games where the refereeing has favoured the Boks - but, rather than whine and bitch about it, you move on and see how you can adjust. You need to establish that you're more than an arrogant Sth African mouth and have something constructive to add.

I don't know about your take on the Deans era at the Crusaders and how he coached conservatively. He had a very mobile pack led by Richie McCaw, a decent lineout, Carter at fly half and two absolute flyers on the wings. His game plan for me seemed to involve putting pressure on the opposition and then capitalising. Yes. I suppose that can be considered conservative. But it was how he coached the backs to play when they were in a position to attack that was impressive (and they would attack from anywhere outside their own quarter). His focus was to shift the ball wide to those 5 metre channels and his flying wingers, then recycle ball if that didn't produce something dazzling, then to swing it back wide again to the other wing. When the defense was stretched (and at a best case there were some flat blokes defending the middle) he would have Carter direct play there. It was simple and it was attacking. I don't know if I would call it conservative. He was, however, seemingly prone to approaching matches in the Republic with a conservative plan and he had some success there. he also had his share of failures, but everyone does in Sth Aftica in super rugby at some stage. I think this is the sort of plan he brought to the Wallabies. I believe they did struggle to see opportunities to run within this system and weren't helped by a combination of losing momentum in the rucks and mauls and from some very ordinary catching and passing in the backs. Also the Boks in particular rush a lot in defense and in a deeper backline Gits struggled to adapt. The last match was a massive improvement on the field, but I am not sure there were wholesale changes to the Deans strategy. You would have to ask him (and get a characteristically non-committal, but well worded response).

Imagine how fine a journalist Spiro would be if his masterful control of the English language was matched once - just once - with a idea worth publishing. Instead the pompous old fart (who was uncharacteristically silent last week) has taken a lone Wallaby victory (the first in a very long time) to totally vindicate his anti-Springbok agenda.

'Mutually Assured Kicking' That's sharp. I'll keep that in mind.

Good thanks KO. A cold war scenario? I like that .... does that mean we have Mutually Assured Kicking? Lol, gee the puns are endless on that line.

Not bad, Terry. You? 'You are playing reactive rugby, reacting to what the opposition do with hte ball, rather than playing proactive rugby and dictating what happens.' I completely agree, but there currently exists a Cold War scenario.. kicking must be met with kicking, and so there is a stand off. Unless, of course, you have kickers like du Preez and M. Steyn.

G'day KO how you doing? I happen to agree re: the constant kicking. If there was anything I hated about Wallaby play for the last few years it has been the constant kicking away of possession. I have always been for running the ball as the first option and only kicking if there is no other alternative. To me, if you kick the ball away then you lose the ability to control the game and score points. You are playing reactive rugby, reacting to what the opposition do with hte ball, rather than playing proactive rugby and dictating what happens. Pretty simple really.

My reply is going to be very long, but it's bedtime! Else I'll muddle through my day and burn the oatmeal again. Perhaps tomorrow night. Many thanks.

The main issue that I had with Spiro's 'Deans mantra' theory is that (IMO) R.D's Canterbury teams were inherently conservative and the excellence of individuals allowed the teams to take advantage of broken play in certain situations. Spiro like to talk as if Deans encourages the Wallabies to be a free-flowing running machine when in fact over the past 16 months they have been one of the most conservative teams in the world. It is only in the past two games that they have kicked less and run more. Therefore, does that mean that Deans always encouraged his players to run, run and run and the players didn't trust themselves and thus ignored him, or does it mean that the coaching panel realised the kicking game was unsuccessful and told the players to kick less? I think Spiro's constant reinforcement of the 'Deans way' is merely self-serving, narrow and lacks an understanding of Deans. He is a good coach but he has never been a promoter of laissez faire rugby and we have seen that over the past year. The commentators had it right on Saturday (Australia looks better when it doesn't kick the ball away than when it does) so why has it taken so long for that to be realised? Hopefully that inflexible and kick dominated approach has been shelved until necessary (horses for courses etc).

Knives Out Re the "Dean's Mantra". I'm sick of it too, especially after an earlier intemperate rant on my part. And it's a mouthful. As the Wallabies struggled, I had feared that Dean's coaching, perhaps, bore the hallmarks of insularity. (I suppose you could call that inflexibility too.) That while rugby elsewhere were borrowing and feeding off from a great variety of sources, he would stick to what he had coached at Canterbury, even when it wasn't succeeding. In a kindly reply to my post, Spiro pointed out that Dean's style is reminiscent of the glory days of Randwick rugby under Geoff Sayle. It has assured me somewhat, and yes, the Wallaby performance last Saturday harked back to those days. If it is so, then it's promising. At the next game, I shall be watching closely to see if the Randwick semblance is really there. PS. You couldn't find it because I was struggling with composing it and finally here it is! Many thanks for the patience.

'KO There’s something strange with replying within this box. The typing keeps going past the right border and I can’t see what I’ve typed. I have to hit the Enter key as I approach the border. will you please be so kind as to read my reply at the bottom of the thread? Many thanks.' Thelma, I'm struggling with the chronology of the reply system. Would you be able to copy and paste your reply or paraphrase it for me and then I'll reply because I simply can't locate it. Thanks, KO.

KO There's something strange with replying within this box. The typing keeps going past the right border and I can't see what I've typed. I have to hit the Enter key as I approach the border. will you please be so kind as to read my reply at the bottom of the thread? Many thanks.

Can we get rid of the 'Deans mantra' as well? In any case, surely any good coach (which I believe Deans is) would not be so easily labelled and aligned with one notion of how to play rugby. Flexibility is the key.

You are right about the Randwick way, Spiro. Dangerous. Sayle was uncompromising. Their teams comprising blokes like Eddie, Maxwell, Campese, Ella and later Knox played a powerful, dominating game because each one was expected to be good at his job and their team mates were able to rely on that happening. The Joeys sides of the late '80s were much the same - played like automotons, expecting to win and did.