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The Boks were absolutely rampaging in the first half of the second test against England, playing some of the best rugby we’ve seen from them against competent opposition since 2009.
They played with purpose and width. You can already see the Bok game plan is light years ahead of the rubbish that Peter de Villiers dished up for four years. Meyer is a good coach – however, he is a dreadful selector – something he shares with de Villiers.
Often de Villiers’ Boks would build up a commanding lead only for the inadequate bench to all be thrown on at roughly the same time. The lead would quickly vanish and the Boks would only just hold on by a few points, or lose. We saw this happen countless times. Against the British and Irish Lions in the first test, Wallabies in Perth 2009, All Blacks in Hamilton 2009, All Blacks 2010 in soccer city and in Ireland in 2010, just to name a few.
I was not celebrating while the Boks opened up a firm lead, as I knew what was waiting on the bench.
Hopefully this English test will prove a wake-up call to Heyneke Meyer. He cannot select his friends. Idiotic decisions such as finally bringing Aplon into the squad to replace the injured Kirchner, only for Basson to make the 22 ahead of Aplon. Once Lambie injured his ankle, instead of having Aplon on the bench to simply slot in at fullback, Olivier replaces Lambie and now Francois Steyn has to move to fullback.
This was completely reshuffling the backline and ruining any momentum the Boks had. Basson proved to be wasting a bench spot as he wasn’t even used.
The whole bench besides Flip Van der Merwe were very much out of their depth. You only have to see how the dominant Bok scrum suddenly started going backwards once Super rugby heavyweights (key word – Super) Werner Kruger and Adriaan Strauss replaced the du Plessis brothers, it didn’t help either with the flimsy Keegan Daniel seemingly reluctant to push and assist The Beast. How on earth Daniel and Coetzee can be preferred ahead of Brussow is criminal.
The Springboks have the talent, and the coaching nous. If they could just get the selections right, world domination awaits.
So once again, the Boks took the foot off the throat thanks to the assistance of their bench – a bench that could be very formidable.
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