Wallabies vs Springboks Rugby Championship preview and prediction

Thought I was watching touch rugby @ the weekend.

Just shows perth supports rugby

Im not saying im right...its ny educated opinion as opposed to your arrogance telling me what i need to look for in rugby players. And at the end of the day your opinion....

I watched the match twice and Hannigan was better than Higgers. He had a noticeably greater degree of urgency to the breakdown and got low to win the battle of the shoulders, Higgers just turned up late and plowed ineffectivley into opponents backs. Higgers also gave away a penalty for being held up, because he was too upright and passed a ball to a Scottish player during a breakout. Hannigan made a couple of mistakes towards the end of the match that were costly, but then he played 80 while Higgers only played 60, so aside from inexperienced he had fatigue as a bigger excuse. Higgers has had 32 chances to secure a test spot and is 30 years old, I think it is time to admit he is the best he will ever be and it isn't good enough. Time to give the young fellas a go.

Perhaps PK but given your players arent getting it right, your coaching nor administration neither what are the chances its fans are? After all, theyre not used to seeing things get done correctly a lot these days are they? From Bens position hes been a lot more used to seeing things done the right way. From the arguments here theres too many ifs and buts, could haves and would haves. There is so much confusion, disagreement on the ROAR amongst oz fans and that appears to be simply because the analysis theyre trying to do is just too difficult in the current climate. Things are a lot clearer from where we tend to sit. Just an observation.

oh agree it says a lot about bias, that group think i.e the majority are often biased. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140914190241-19632410-why-the-majority-is-always-wrong

ben just because you have watched a lot of rugby and participated in various aspects doesn't make you right. I made my statement since you stated that When the ABs play either the boks or aus i know who im more confortable the ABs face….and thats Jantjes. this indicated an ab centric bias. Happy to accept you consider more than how a player performs against the ab's. Number of years doesn't mean much if you don't learn new things every year, a lot of people repeat their first year over and over again i.e learn a lot initially, mind and opinion gets set and then just reinforce that view. Not saying you are like this but number of years on its own , like the concept of seniority, doesn't equate to meritocracy, the best ideas and understanding may be from the most recent to the game.

Except that Larkham wasnt as good as Carter. Rarely would anyone bar an ozzie say that. What does that say about bias?

Mate ive been watching rugby for 46 years ever since the 71 Lions grabbed my attention. Ive participated in all aspects of our game. I know what to look for in rugby players but thanks for the advice.

totally agree. Etzebeth is very very fit , no excess fat so his total weight is less but he would be the most powerful lock going around. Stronger than Retallick IMO. I only wish stats as you listed were published as well as sprint times for 10M, 20M , 40M and 100M in rugby gear of course.

Ben you do havea bias. You rate a player from another team based on how much anxiety it brings about when they play the ab's. That is a very ab centric bias. A player should be measured how they perform against a wider group. For instance Foley may perform better against AB's but he has lost games for the wallabies against lesser teams like scotland, ireland, due to poor performances. So you need to look at has a player been instrumental in wins or losses for his team against a number of opponents.

agree with this however you can analyse a players weakness / strengths independent of the pack. Measuring any single player based on whether a team won or lost is lazy. Take any player from the ab's and swap with their wallaby counterpart and the ab's still win. Does that automatically make 1 player better or worse.

I thought it was Kafer who did that analysis. Yes both Hooper and McMahon were very good in support play. That is a great strength of both Hooper and Foley, and now McMahon. I do agree that a lot of roar posters don't appreciate / recognise the support running. Folau does a lot of it too despite hollow accusations of being lazy.

I think the WBs will win this. Not nearly as convinced about the Boks as some others seem to be.

PK - I did not see Jantes getting SA to a WC final. I think if there is duel between Jantes and Foley tonight it will be resolved by the better pack. I think it's BS to say a fly half is better than his opposing without putting the packs' into perspective. This rubbish that Carter was a better fly half than Larkham is case in point. The Aussie pack during the Larkham year gained parity with the Abs at best--and that was when we beat them consistently in the late 90s. But games we won in the 2000s were based on Larkham's brilliance behind a weaker pack. It'll be interesting to see whichack is better tonight. And which fly half.

But Pk and F, and to be fair, did you see the yards they tracked from their own 22 through Genia's try in Dunedin. Mitchell did an excellent analysis of it. Hooper still running at the end of it got taken out by Retalick--leading to the try. Shame that the run without ball does not come up in the stats. But it's runs like that that seem to be appreciated in other football codes compared to rugby. We really need to see the gps on these guys at theend of the game. I'll try to find the Mitchell clip from Fox.

prior to the French series his weight was given as 120kg. Must be some diet he went on ......but anyways too much emphasis on weight . A more important stat would be body fat % , gym power stats , HR recovery stats all matter . Years ago the Boks were certainly the biggest around but also poorly conditioned . ....The last games the Bokke played against France and Argentina they were lighter in the pack but still comfortably got the shove on both those sides . ...oh and Etsebeth LOOKS bigger than any lock in World rugby but stats wise quite a midget.

Yep the scrum will get slaughtered and they'll miss a heap of tackles... just like Dunedin

Yes Paul, yet he didnt win the Scotland match cos he did kick the goal...seems he cant ever win huh?

Aah, theres another...'would have been...', you seem to have them all in your conditional repertoire... Enjoy the game Fionn, and be sure to enlighten us on what would have happened...cos nobody else will actually know.