Can the Bulls & Stormers Actually Pull This Off? | Loose Pass Rugby Podcast

This is the Loose Pass Rugby Podcast, only on Megaphone Rugby. Welcome back to the Loose Pass Rugby Podcast, our usual chat with Hugh Griffin. Hugh Griffin! I got it figured out this weekend, it just slipped my mind. Hugh Griffin, Hugh Griffin.

Is that it? Is that another? Still wrong again. As close as it was, I can't believe this, a year and a half of going, I can't even say your name man, and then Granger comes on, he goes, oh yes, i'm a man of the world don't you know hugh of course completely changed i can't believe it hugh hugh is that better now i suck at this like i said my africans accent is speaking at night which is at the moment that you know i'm africans it just comes through quite badly listen brother it's got a lot of there's a lot of heat going on at the moment about jockin albert and i had a chat about that i'd love to hear your opinion on it you know the northern culture is more than we do and And we are, and this is going to be my free consword for you. There's a WeChant going on, we think.

And everybody's surprised that we are so up in arms about, you know, touching our jargon in Alba. So what's the story there? What are you hearing? What's your impressions of what's going on there? It is very cute.

The way that all my South African group chats are all very angry about an argument that happened in Ireland. I swear it's got nothing to do with you guys. But anyway, you have to break it down to kind of which topic that we're talking about. you know what what what is what is the question um so i if we talk about the press conference itself and the exchange between jack and the journalist i think what's happened there is something that's building up over a lot of time that we all know and i feel like it's the worst kept secrets that there's a power struggle friction you know trouble in paradise aren't going on between jack and leo and you know i've listened to a podcast with bernard jackman about it and it clearly seems that jack feels constrained or is not able to do what he wants to do in that leinster system this town ain't big enough for both of us kind of thing going on and what that journalist is trying to do is trying to draw it out into the open and i think it's fair to say that he succeeded brewery or canna succeeded in what he was trying to do some people don't like the way that he answered asked the questions i think that ultimately he's there in the room he's got the the right to ask whatever he likes but clearly jack didn't like it now on the one hand jack's got a right to reply and he's got a right to tell this journalist where to go if he wants to however ultimately this journey journalist was fishing and jack bit and it seems like you know the fact that jack was bringing up something that this journalist wrote i think years ago this deal with the devil line and to be honest most of the chats that i've heard from irish people is they don't think that rury was particularly out of line they don't think that the journalist has crossed the line here but clearly jack has remembered that and kept that with him and he's started talking later in the interview about how when i was at monster you spoke to me like this but now i'm at leinster you speak to me like this like clearly this is something that's been building up a lot over a lot of time so you can say you don't like um what the journalist did that's up to you what is also true is that jack bit and jack chose to have that interaction and like i said he's got a right to reply i think maybe discretion is the better part of valor he could have kept his mouth shut because now jack has exposed the rift that there is in the leinster changing room or at least the leinster coaching box he's he's put it out there i would say that generally with leinster there is a culture of it's somebody else's fault it's always somebody else's fault whether it's leo comes out and says are you journalists you love having pot shots at us or all these other provinces are stealing our players you know that's one thing it's all or leo as i've spoken about in the past we're saying oh it's because the lion's tour i posted something on blue sky today and i had an irish fan in the replies saying oh it's because the the lions tour like still we're in june of 2026 and they're blaming the lions tour in 2025 for why things are going badly it's always somebody else's fault for some people in leinster um that said that answer that jack gave you know where they asked him like how do you think things are going stuff goes well i'm not in charge of the attack and i'm not in charge of them all and you know i the the players made mistakes on the pitch and stuff that is a bit him going it's not my fault a little bit it's a bit jack going well it's nothing to do with me and that's not really what if i was a leinster fan what i would like to see him say and i think leinster fans if they take issue with that i think that's fair because you basically got a guy the phrase that i've seen multiple irish friends send to me is jack is washing his hands of it he's saying it's not my fault basically and you can say whether it's his fault or not but you shouldn't say it really in my opinion is it this totally separate question of is jack's defense a problem i think murray o'connor's point of it doesn't fit with leinster is fair but then it's a question of you've hired jack ninaber so if you're not willing to change the whole rest of your game your high possession game which ninaber's defense isn't suited to i think that's a fair comment but why have you hired him if you weren't going to change your attack and i think we would all agree that leinster's attack is now starting to look a bit old-fashioned so should probably change i personally don't think that ninaba's defense is the top issue in leinster i think the attack is a bigger issue and i think that the totally needless squad rotation and selection is a bigger issue and i think that the confused nature of the organization of is it a organization for the point of winning club trophies is it for developing ireland players is it for preparing current ireland internationals to make them ready for international tests it's confused and i think bernard jackman made this point of it's not an aligned organization top to bottom you know it's being pulled in different directions and that alignment has to come from the top and the top is leo yet it is also true to say that ninab's defense this season has not been as effective as it was last season last season you could credibly call it the best defense in club rugby this season is not that it's not a bad defense it's not the worst in the urc by any means i think it's third or fourth best but it's not the best anymore and if you compare the numbers to last year in terms of tries conceded points conceded dominant tackles turnovers won all these things that i put in my leinster video at the start of the year it has gotten worse so jack said in that exchange with the journalist i'm here to coach what i think is the best defense in the world and if that's a drift defense or a blitz defense then i'll coach that i'm not sure i'm not sure he means that with his whole heart to be honest i think he coaches his way and he would like everybody else to change what they do to accommodate what he wants to do so in order to summarize what i'm saying is i don't think that is the problem at leinster however i do think that he is accountable for some of the issues that they are having all right i let you ramble there so now i'm gonna come back at you the one thing that that stood out like you just said to me for now and harry and i talked about this as well okay and he said no but the attack and this and that and it's not my problem and there seems to be um a bit of a silo situation you know i spoke to kennedy last week and the big thing now at the moment is integration it's a transition it's not a defense and an attack you know two separate things they sort of you know they have to interact and they have to flow into the other and everything else so i'm wondering how much freedom jock has got in that sense in the sense okay now it's no more defending right now so now you stop and now tyler takes over now it's going to be attack i don't know how much integration there is and i think the fact that he said that is hinting at that that there is to be there's these chinese walls between these different departments that it doesn't have enough input we know we've heard it that for example in the final last year leo just took control it completely again and stuffed it up there was a shouting match between him and jock that we heard about at you know the roof almost raised apparently you know different points of views who's actually in charge there who's the head coach because there's a lot of people saying yeah but leo's the director of rugby and jock's the head coach so what is the actual situation who's who now who's actually responsible for what who takes who takes the glory and who takes the fall this is what it comes what it comes down to and you know you can see the body language where jacques was sitting in the in the coaches coaches box and everything else as far away from leo as he possibly could clearly there's something wrong there so talk to me about that who's actually the coach and who's the director and who's demand in charge and taking the fall for it to be responsible for it well first thing that i'll say is when you type leinster coach into google a bus company comes up um next that i will say like a boss okay so yeah uh next thing that i will say is i am on the leinster um men's management team website page right now and i shall tell you what it says it says head coach leo cullen it says provincial kicking coach which is an interesting job title emmett farrell it says that assistant coach forwards or foods for some reason it's not spelt in a full word whereas all the other words on the page are spelled in a full world uh ascent assistant coach forwards is robin mcbride assistant coach attack is tyler blayendahl and then it says senior coach jack ninaber and then contact skills coach sean o'brien so whilst it defines who is the attack coach it does not define who is the senior who's the defense coach or the assistant defense coach and it does not refer to jac as a defense coach it refers to him as a senior coach so it calls leo cullen the head coach not the director of rugby he calls him the head coach and it calls jacques now nina a senior coach not the defense coach however jacques has made it very clear in his press conference that he is only accountable for defense according to him all right enough about jacques and our sensitivities in south Africa we are a little bit touchy sometimes when it comes to our guys our people if even if it's got nothing to do with us as you probably know so let's talk about the Glasgow versus Bulls game to me I think that's the one that probably might go against the home team because honestly I think the fact that the Glasgow Warriors are not playing uh in Scottsdown Scottsdown I'm not sure how to pronounce that that's going to make a huge difference playing on grass the Bulls love playing on grass prefer playing on grass used to playing on grass Glasgow not so much we heard the the Storms defense coach saying why they're battling to stop malls so much on the 4g because they can't get studs in the ground that's what he called it that's interesting what is what is from this game it's interesting that he mentioned malls because glasgow are one of the most effective morning teams in club rugby and have been for a couple of years and it's maybe it's something about they can't stop it because they can't get studs in the ground but it's it's very capable of carrying it on i don't recall ever really noticing guys goes more defense so that's an interesting point so next time i watch glasgow in scotston i will make sure to take a point of how they defend them all see if there's a difference there but yes you are absolutely right that that playing it in murrayfield compared to scotston you can say it however you like you can say scotstoon scotstoon there's lots of different dialects in scotland and they all pronounce it differently so there's no wrong way um so yes it will make a big difference because as you say the south african teams are more comfortable playing on grass and the thing about 4g pitches is that all of them are slightly different and there's ones that are bouncy than others or ones that are more abrasive than others and things so that glasgow is kind of like knowing your own it's literally knowing your own turf right it's knowing your own backyard they've got that advantage glasgow would have the bulls don't so but i also agree with you that this is probably the one in my opinion that is most likely to switch over as in the away team has got the best chance of winning because glasgow versus bulls is such a great rivalry is such a great um test of two teams who are so different to each other and ask each other questions in different ways and both got very intelligent rugby players as well and the way that they try and figure it out through the game and they become accustomed each other and they make plans for each other we know that franco's got the thing about the bulls and i'm sure the bulls have got a thing towards glasgow for winning the urc title in pretoria and stuff big thing so so it's it's it's spicy in a good way though it's not the kind of thing where you're like oh god this is just because a lot of like derbies and things kind of descend a little bit and aren't great games whereas glasgow balls is usually a great game they bring the best out of each other yeah that's true a derby is typically i want to kill you and send you back to your forefathers kind of a thing and you end up being injured. And it's almost a nothing game, especially in the league.

It's not a nothing game. You've got a full standard. But, I mean, there's nothing really at play there. A game like this in a knockout, these two teams are becoming a bit of a, like you said, a bit of a story there. If you look at those stats, you give me the stats, I'm going to put it on the screen here as well.

Where do you think Glasgow is the strongest and the Bulls are the weakest and, conversely, the Bulls are the strongest and Glasgow are the weakest? Where would you look at if you were one of these coaches? well fascinatingly ember and and kind of excitingly for bulls fans is there aren't actually that many that glasgow are significantly ahead in you know even the ones where the percentage difference is high which is line out steals 86 percent more for glasgow in real term that's only 12 over the course of an 18 game season it's not really many and some teams don't that's a tactical thing as well of um you know some teams don't go for line out steals and they just choose not to so that's not really one to get excited about if you're a glasgow fan uh the the one that kind of stands out is defenders beaten we know that glasgow are a possession-based team they like to hold the ball for a long time you know you'll you'll chat with franco where they said he said that they have like 1 000 1 500 passes per training session that's because they like to keep the ball and that means they'd beat a lot more defenders so glasgow have beaten over 130 more defenders than the bulls over the course of the season but apart from that the differences are pretty pretty small and you know it wouldn't be fascinating analysis for me to come on and say that i think that the bulls have got a scrum advantage over glasgow anyone can tell you that but looking at these stats i notice how balls actually have a slight kicking advantage over glasgow which isn't what i would necessarily expect so the balls have kicked almost exactly 1000 meters further over the course of the season which isn't tons you know we've seen bigger differences as we highlighted between guys going connex last week but these numbers suggest to me that the balls have a slightly more varied kicking game so kicks retained the balls have more nine more over the course of the season but Glasgow's kicks are almost always um to be retained and we saw those examples of the Bulls against Munster kicking contestables in their own half and winning them and then you look at total kicks over the course of a season the bulls have kicked 50 times more so that not necessarily what i was expecting to see that the bulls would be ahead on the kicking statistics so that's an interesting one that i'm going to watch out for now when i check out the game of course you know scrum the bulls have got the advantage there like i said nearly double the number of scrum penalties won and you it's just not rocket science to suggest that that's going to be an advantage for them there what i will be interested in we talked about turnovers with our podcast with kennedy last week which has done i'm really happy with how many views that people have gotten people have gone really into it it's like a ted talk i told you the bulls were watching it when i was there yeah yeah interesting dream yeah so the bulls give away the most turnovers of any team in the urc and they give away the most turnovers in their own half of any team in the urc at least they did over the course of the full 18 games and we saw with what i'm now calling the basketball balls of these crazy offloads and things that chicago bulls yeah always when you google search the chicago bulls come up so yeah sorry i'm interrupting you yeah and glasgow are very very very good on the transitions as we learned against connor so is that going to give glasgow an in because even against munster in a game that they won very easily the bulls were the bulls were making conceding a lot of turnovers and giving munster opportunities that munster weren't good enough to take glasgow might be good enough to take them so that's the thing that's not really captured in the stats that i would be but i'm probably most fascinated about this game is will the bulls be the brave bulls or would they go back to being the bashing bulls a couple of things that i remember now from you and larry talking about this on saturday after the match one or two the one or two times that monster actually were on the front foot you always thought they were going to score you never thought the bulls might keep them out that's a worry for me like you said in that you know rightly so a better team will never let any opportunity go by and the bulls are a bit vulnerable to that and something else that neil build us near the brain you call it offloads he doesn't call it offloads he's got a different word for it wasn't what was it again a different term it's a pass after contact it's not an offload it's a pass so what's the difference what's the difference clearly there's a very big and important difference in there now you and i are not intelligent enough we just not we know we don't have the iq to understand but i tell you what i know one of the i know two of the rules for an offload at the bulls is you firstly you have to know who you're passing you have to see him and now i can't remember oh and you have to have control of the ball so there's two things first one is you have to have control of the ball and secondly you have to know where you're passing it you can't just throw it back you know this little back flip passes and hope somebody's going to be there that's against the rules of the bulls that's interesting that's him it is and i'm trying to compare that now to like when i watch the french teams offload do they always know who they're passing to i think they do i think they do a lot of french offloads you'll see the ball doesn't actually get caught by anyone it lands on the ground and bounces and things so that might look like they don't know who they're offloading to but maybe they do so maybe not in his hands but it's yeah on the way there kind of a thing you know yeah okay yeah i think it'd be pretty crazy to pat to offload the ball and not know who it was going to anyway so maybe it's just a bit of a logical rule so if you were to ask you about these bulls statistics you know the bulls have you know that a season of two halves very clear two halves and even if you take that you know the Champions Cup games into consideration as well, the terrible loss against Bristol Bears where you forced me to do a reaction review. If you had to, I don't know if you did it, I'm just asking a random question, but the first half stats compared to the second half stats, you know what I'm saying? If you take the second half in isolation, would these statistics look any different as a percentage maybe?

Yes, I think they probably would. And I think that the Bulls are still evolving. I don't think, and I think I said this on the post-match reaction, i don't think this is the final form balls i think this is still the building balls so i should imagine next season their stats will look different again i don't know exactly how the stats would look different between the first half of the season the second half of the season the attack was never really the problem with the balls was it even on well under jake the attack probably wasn't as good as it is now but it was always the defense that was the issue with the balls and the thing about rugby is it's actually quite bad at defensive stats and it's very hard to track that because rugby doesn't really do stats against this this is something that i would like to see rugby do more of they obviously know how many points they've conceded and you can go back and count 22 meter entries but they should really have like line breaks against i think it's because rugby stats are mostly done on an individual basis this so they go this player did that so you can say this player made a line break but you don't get this this player allowed a line break isn't a stats that anybody does but the team allows line breaks as a collective so i would like to see in rugby stats more line breaks against 22 meter entries conceded against 22 meter conversion against but i'd like to see more of that coming so i can answer questions like that because i agree with you i think the stats would be different but i don't know exactly how as a bit of interest you talk about the best defensive team and you know the urc and the likes that's based on the urc stats i suppose on their website and they don't even show trials conceded they talk about dominant tackles and tackles and stuff like that if you look at these two teams how many tries have they conceded you know i mean i know the bulls scored the most tries but i'm not sure how many or how few they've actually conceded i suppose it's a lot more than glasgow i will be able to tell you now because that is tracked on all rugby in the urc table so tries against you so tries against glasgow were the fewest in the urc they conceded 48 joints with the stormers also on 48 the bulls conceded 59 so 11 more across 18 games all right what's the worst one as a matter of interest just for reference sake uh zebra with 85 85 and what's the median more or less the average if you had to guess roughly looking at that uh it's about 60. all right so the bulls were pretty average on defense yes but an attack like the way above they're the best team in terms of try scored that's an interesting statistic statistic yeah they've scored uh five more tries than any other side and they scored 20 more tries than the bulls after stormers which is an important thing in in south africa and uh one more thing you just mentioned earlier when we started talking about this that glasgow is famous for their malls you know they inevitably score from that how do the bulls fare in their malls attacking oh i can tell you how they do with the ball but again rugby doesn't really track malls against this another good example of um where rugby starts to kind of have a big hole in the whole against thing and again i'm having to use opsa which hasn't been updated since february which is killing me but even around still that sounds like something that's closed down kind of a thing don't you think they're posting things on social media but that's about it so meters gained per mall the bulls are on 2.8 and the bulls score a try every 9.

2 malls the stormers get more meters but actually score less frequently for malls which is interesting given how important they are to their strategy bulls score a try every nine mauls the warriors guys go warriors score a try every seven mauls and again they've got slightly better meters 0.2 of a meter better per mole which isn't tons to be honest and those stats can be skewed a bit by where on the field you choose to maul because some teams choose to maul like on the halfway line and stuff whereas if you're a team that doesn't choose to do that then you're probably going to get fewer meters because it's further for you to go but you talk about line out steals what does that mean and I'm asking that question simply because when you mentioned lineouts remember when we spoke to Franco he said that he's he tells his he tells his team to always compete even if it's um you know to get the benefit of the skew for skew throw because the moment you compete and it's Q, you get the ball. Does that count as a steal? For example, if it goes Q and you jump, then now the ref has to give it to you, to the defending team. I don't think so.

Again, line outs is another one where Roby stats aren't great. Because if I give you an example, let's say the hooker overthrows the entire line out, someone in midfield bats it back, the scrum half gets, the scrum half picks it up and gets smashed and into touch for example which is a bit of a hard scenario to picture in your head but say something along those lines that still counts as a line out win because the the team that threw it in retained possession yeah but if you throw it skew and the rev blows and it's a scrum you've lost possession so that actually counts as a steal no it doesn't count as a steal though because the other team haven't stolen it i think the only thing that counts as a steal is if you jump up and you catch it actually yeah interfere with it or take it away yeah so line out stats are a bit iffy because there can be a line out which you me or anybody would say that line out went wrong but the stats say that it was a line out win because the next team that touched the ball was the team who threw it in even though it's clearly gone wrong so that's the thing that also when you look about you know line breaks made but also line breaks conceded who is a guy who actually conceded that line break? It's going to be dependent on who's watching the game, what his definition of that is. One guy might say it's number 12, the other guy might say it's number 13 in another company, for example. They need to have a certain set.

But it's difficult. You can't make a rule that suits everything. Listen, I want you to take out your pen out of your cap there because I know then you're doing some serious thinking. What should we be looking for in terms of Glasgow and what should we be looking for in terms of the bulls for this weekend? Stuff that we can now learn and look out for.

I like those kinds of things, like offloads. Now I know what to look for when they do an offload. What do you think? I think, like I said, for Glasgow, it needs to be defenders beaten. It needs to be how long they keep hold of the ball and where they attack from, because they're not scared of launching attacks from deep, and they score a lot of long-range tries.

So it would be how they try and preserve possession. I would also say off their set plays, how they use Sioni Tuopilotto and Stafford McDowell and how they interchange and who between them is taking on the role of being the ball carrier or the distributor i would say that's probably the the interesting thing with glasgow is particularly off first phase moves like set attacks from line outs and scrums from the bulls point of view i would say watch the the offloading game as we mentioned and as i mentioned as well the kicking game how they approach the kicking game what kind of kicks that they look for who they kick to for glasgow where they kick on the field how long those kicks are that's that's what i think that i'm going to be watching for mainly in this game is the difference in the kicking strategies there is a curveball as well though ember something that makes it different something that might render all previous analysis irrelevant what is that it's going to be raining no man no oh no it was such a good um a nice nice last week at in in glasgow you know okay conoff game sun was shining ah no that's not good oh we can play in the rain we're not scared i'm just thinking now you just mentioned about all the previous games i mean andre is a complete analysis for us on that champions cup remember game round of 16. do you think there's going to be any difference now because when i asked you on you know with akraman how they other with the process compared to what they learned from playing against monster in the league phase he just said it's not that's not much to compare a knockout game makes irrelevant like you just said any truth to that you think this weekend as well quite possibly and if it is raining i said i can't remember if it was on this one or another one i said that if the game comes down to scrums and kicking threes the bulls will win and if it's raining it increases the chances of that being how the game goes knock-ons blah blah blah many more scrums yeah you're right fumble fumble the ball fumble and remember also wanting that andre pointed out first remember you about two epiloto breaking to the inside remember that yeah yeah that's interesting okay that's yeah i'm going to put that link up here people go watch that that's a good one yeah can you picture it and just imagine two minutes to go jondre pollard is stood on the halfway line with the ball on the tee with the rain dripping down his face his hair all wet with his eyes staring at the posts to put the balls into the urc final two points behind make it you win by one point don't make it the season's over no i can actually picture it i've seen it somewhere before i just can't remember where it sort of rings a bell vaguely i'm not sure what it is anyway so your prediction glasgow sorry i just i always pick the home team it's boring but it's not a home team it's like i was going to play in alice park the bulls playing in our spark it's not their own team glasgow sorry yeah sorry i was right glasgow finished top of the log for a reason and i generally think they are at the moment a more complete team than the bulls i still think the bulls are they're not done they're not cooked does that make sense they're not they're not finished they're not the full article yet yeah yeah so so i'm saying glasgow but i'm very looking forward to it yeah i'm looking forward to i think the bulls are going to do it i think the bulls going to be in the final the only question is whether the bulls going to be in cape town or they're going to be in dublin so let's move on to that quite swiftly to the game in dublin then instead of us it's a stormers and there's like we discussed in the beginning a big storm ring around the coach's heads but on the stormer side you know you've been saying it to me remember to i want to talk about sasha so sasha's not playing how much of a setback for the stormers is that well yeah so i i know we've spoken about sasha a couple of times before on this show and and he's been in the thumbnail plenty of times and he might be again but i thought that because he's now out injured and his season's done i thought it would be a good time to revisit it and the question of how big of an impact no sasha is going to have on the stormers and it's going to have a massive impact because it's going to very very very dramatically change how they play the difference between having yuri matthia and sasha at number 10 is going to have a big impact so let me i'm going to reach you some stats now so this is i went through all of sasha's stats for the regular season not including the last game against cardiff and sasha is in the 99th percentile or if you want to put it another way he is in the one percent the top one percent of the urc for the following statistics carry meters clean breaks collection of loose balls conversion goals defenders beaten kicks from hand meters total kick meters penalty goals penalty kicks for touch meters points and tries so obviously lacking a player who has those kind of statistics is in at least some way going to negatively it's basically arguably the biggest ball in hand threat in the urc which i think is more or less fair to say people can let us know in the comments down below if they think there's a bigger ball in hand threat in the urc but i think sasha is definitely in that conversation if not the clear winner so lacking that but that also very much tells the story of the type of 10 that sasha is which is that he's a running 10 not a distributing 10 this is something that we've spoken about a lot and i feel like now it's probably a good time for me to say that i and i know because i've said in the past like man is my favorite 10 so people might think that that's me being anti-sasha my bias is that i like a passing 10 they're my favorite kind of tends to watch and so thus sometimes i do find sasha a little bit more frustrating to watch than other tens even though it is very very clear that there are things that sasha can do that almost no other 10 in the world can do so i just want to be clear on that because i don't want to be seen as the guy who bashes sasha or the guy on megafoon who is anti-sasha and stuff because that's that's not who i am or anti-stormers for that matter or anti-stormers exactly anti-stormers sounds like someone who's in the crowd you know and someone who's like anti-stormers you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah um against the stormers yeah let's call it yes i'm not against the stormers and to kind of like have that other side of sasha you know that you call the duality of sasha both sides of sasha he is also in the top one percent of the urc for handling errors for kicks charged down for kick possession loss for missed goal attempts for uh turnovers conceded from poor passes for kick errors for turnovers lost in his own half for turnovers lost in opposition half and for turnovers conceded so he's not a distributing 10 and he's a risk-taking 10 and someone put it to me that he's the guy who's always trying to do everything himself and he's he's a young guy as well it's easy to forget he's what and his early season of his of his career been so disrupted by injury i think it's fair to say that there's probably still a lot of learning for sasha to do and i don't think that's a criticism i think any fly half with the mileage that he has or doesn't have compared to some of his competitors i think it's fair to say that he's got areas of his game that are still developing and i'm sure they will develop and i'm sure when it comes to the age of 29 a lot of those statistics that i've mentioned won't be true anymore but like i said it's going to have a huge impact on the stormers and coming to yuri matea i actually looked at their two win rates and if you just if you just take the urc because i don't really want to take the champions cup because in the pool stage of the champions cup it's almost only played five champions cup games in the pool stages you've got a lot of like b teams floating around you know not close competitions and things it's not as reliable so i've just gone with the urc to be a bit more kind of apples for apples if that makes sense and you're mate actually has a higher win percentage than sasha this season 69 i think it was for Matea and 53% for Sasha and if you go back to that early part of the season where Storm was on that winning run that was more Matea at 10 than it was Sasha at that point now you then get into like oh who did they play who did they beat and stuff and obviously Sasha was 10 when they beat the Bulls home and away which is massive and he was also 10 when they destroyed Glasgow who obviously the best team in the league and he was 10 for that game as well so it's not like when they lost against the sharks over and away he was also the 10 when they lost the sharks over the way he was also the 10 when they drew with ulster he was also the 10 when they lost to connect he was also the 10 when they lost to cardiff and the lions he was the 10 when they lost to the lions and things so for me i'm not sure because mateo was the 10 when they kneeled leinster at home so i'm not sure there's tons of difference in it in terms of quality of opposition faced either i just wonder if you asked dobbo of the current injuries that they've got you know injuries to the wingers injuries in the second row injuries in the front row um uh branas being out injured i i just wonder if you asked dobbo who his most impactful injury was would he definitely say sasha and i'm not sure that he definitely would be based on some of the injuries they've got in other departments some of the lack of depth they've got in other departments and i think like i said having matia in i'm not here to say better or worse that and i just want to enforce that's not the point i'm trying to make but it's different it's massively different for example matthew replaced sasha against cardiff in the quarterfinal he replaced him after 52 minutes matthew passed the ball twice as many times as sasha did despite being on the pitch for 20 minutes less there's the difference i'm not saying better or worse i'm saying difference and that is going to have a big impact on how the stormers play in this game against leinster compared to how they've been playing since january really okay those those extra passes did it lead to extra points from the from the back line did it make a difference that they managed to adapt to it was that it suit them better maybe because lots of people saying oh the the forwards were very impressive but the the backs were all over place you know i don't know if it was before or after sasha did you see a discernible difference or improvement slash deterioration when yuri was actually the the flyoff in the game i think i did i haven't watched it twice so i would i might go back and watch it again and have a different view but i think i saw the rest of the backs getting slightly more touches because you've got a guy inside them who passes rather than carries and i think i saw willemsa getting a bit more involved because with with sasha off the pitch williams becomes the guy he is the springbok you know the storm is three spring box that cober sasha and williams two of them are injured so now williams here is the guy and i i've said many times that i think williams gets into a world 23 if not 15. so i don't think that's controversial that williams when there's no sasha where there's no cobers on the pitch becomes the guy and his phenomenal offload for the um assist for the zastra so I expect that to see I expect to see that yeah but that's quite interesting now in terms of my biggest worry if I was the Stormers you know if in terms of losses would have been Sinatla he played a blinder and they he gave them what they were missing good a good wing now he got injured again after how long a layoff and now you've got I don't know who's going to be playing at wing this weekend but cup it's pretty bare there and if you're talking about a kicking game you know contestables and the likes i think the the stormers are vulnerable well should we talk about the difference in the stats now between leinster and the stormers because it's actually closer than you might think yeah so the big difference and again there might be some counterintuitive ones here some ones that people expected to be the other way around so leinster have thrown 50 more offloads than the stormers this season over 18 games they have made nearly 50 more line breaks than the stormers over 18 games which might be a surprising one to some people they've made more tackles as well this is the thing about stormers games is i don't have the official ball in play stats for stormers games but my eye test tells me that the ball in play for stormers games is much lower than it is for other teams in the urc if you compare say like glasgow versus connect on friday night the ball in play was massive and i've never seen the stormers play like that i don't think i've ever seen the stormers play like that i'm not saying better or worse i'm saying difference turnovers one leinster have won 10 more not tons of difference i mean it's not a surprise again it's not interesting or unique analysis to say that the stormers have got an advantage at the set piece pretty much every set piece stat is in the stormers favor almost apart from line out offenses the stormers have given away more penalties at line outs but you're talking three 11 to 8 so three different over 18 games nothing so yeah that that is pretty much that's another area of concern this weekend you know the lock stocks are suddenly running a bit big from what i can gather and you have to remember ember as i correctly predicted last week it's in dublin so you're going to get a silly referee call yeah you'll just see i want to i want to post that video of yours on on megafood come on man okay you can post it it's in the i'll sent it to you again if you want yeah because that's such a bloody clever video you made because you said you're playing lanester there's going to be a dubious call the guy landing on his head and not getting a yellow card you mean every single thing that you you pointed it out then you played a video from the game to prove your point it was brilliant i'm going to post it i'm going to put the link up here so good but it's for a quick one to watch honestly that was one of the better ones i love that one so that's good right talk to me about the uh the lanester side of things um they're gonna they're gonna battle in the scrums i suppose what can we expect from leinster you know forget about the fact that mom and dad are fighting a bit you know the kids are cowering how are they going to play is it are there two camps in the lens by the way in this that the jock camp and the leo camp or is it just a big part of my imagination honestly i think there's three camps i think there's the jack camp the leo camp and the players camp the players are just there like watching them fight honestly i don't i i would be surprised i don't know i've I've only go off what I've heard other Irish people say on podcasts and tell me. But I get the sense that I haven't heard any kind of suggestion that the players are split between the coaches.

That's not been brought up that I've heard. So I don't know. I'm not there. I haven't spoken to any of the players. No, sure.

But that's not the impression that I get. So it's funny, you know, because I was thinking, like, against the Lions, I think I could coach Leinster to beat the Lions. Sorry, Lions, it's not about you. but the lions had pitched up there on saturday yes definitely i agree with you yeah if lens to rang me up and said hugh um leo's off sick and jack's stubbed his toe we need someone to come and coach the boys for a week i reckon i could coach lindsay to beat the lions to be honest um just hey do what you always do see you on saturday um yeah the last were abysmal i don't know what happened there i mean they spent two weeks in ireland maybe on holiday or something it was too nice i think they did i think they maybe arrived in ireland and you know these guys from joeberg maybe they haven't been on many holidays to ireland before and they were like hey this is nice the sun was out it was great weather that was a heat wave remember you said yeah yeah all right okay like hey this is cool and then they got pissed for two weeks and then they're like oh now we've got uh cop got scoped by that's damn anyway um sorry i want to i want to before i forget man i want to teach you african's word okay remember i mentioned the witch sounds right at the beginning yes so in africa that's called the hexa yeah a hexa says hexa like hexa hexa hexagon so just hexa hexa and then yuck yuck yuck yeah hexa is a witch which which is yeah and yuck is hunt yeah hexa yeah yeah there's a hexa against your opinion other people we will not stand for it so anyway sorry i forgot to ask you to teach you so and you're going to teach me something welsh at the end am i right yes i could teach you then i could teach you it now now let's go i can still remember i wrote it down croissa and then croissa no croiso but yes oh man then i wrote it down croiso no and croiso no croiso and croissan all but i mean i'm making notes of it here i'm a better student than you are yeah i'm taking notes okay uh so i'm still teaching you nice words at the moment so i'm going to teach you the welsh word to thank you okay which is d oh that's i actually know that one i've heard it before d-i-o-l which you don't say ch oh no man why is the l there because it just is i must go find that someone in the comments i think it's my friend steve Wanderer. He's called Wanderer.

He gave me a word to ask you to pronounce in Wales, but it's like this long. No, I think I know what which one it is, and I'm not going to. I said it before, and I'm going to say it again. The longest word in Afrikaans that I know is two biffles with one squirt, more dood, so there we go. It's a completely made up name, so don't worry about it.

Anyway, let's go back to the game. Leinster, what are you expecting from Leinster on this Saturday? Against a bit of a depleted storm aside. They're gonna storm is gonna go for you know look at the opportunity you can make history here forget about the fact that Sasha's not playing and Kuba's not playing this is your trans boys it's gonna be a bit of an emotional thing more than anything else how's Leinster gonna approach it I think Leinster are gonna approach it the same as they approach every game same thing we try to do every night Pinky try to take a metronomic the Leinster are very much a team that you can you've seen them play once you've seen them play every time they play the same every week so I think they'll do against the summers if they didn't come up with a special plan for ubb in the champions cup final i don't think they're going to come up with a special plan for the stormers to be honest but do they need to do you think i've been asking myself the question of what does this game look like for the stormers to win if the stormers win this game what will the game have looked like that's the thing interesting and i think it has to be low ball in play which is an anathema to leinster i think it will be lots and lots and lots of set pieces and i think that it will be a lot i think it will be the stormers will have to be very very clinical with the opportunities that they get and they will have to defend like dogs they will have to tackle the house down and smash them behind the game line and win turnovers what's his name paul de villiers is is going to have to have a heck of a game so looking at that bordeaux game but they beat leinster so what would the stormers take from that game because we know leinster was ineffective on attack the phase of the phase of the phase and they got tired allegedly because of the offense which we don't agree with but can the stormers do similar to what bordeaux did without you know not being the stormers if you know what i mean that kind of a thing they need to be very good on the transitions which i know seems easy to say since we've had the uh we've had the talk from coach kennedy we now experts um you are you're a bit better than i do but yeah okay they need to be good on the transitions when they win them thing is the stormers don't score from far out either and they get sort of 22 fever let's call it that you know bashing away bashing away bashing away then they're not a clinic if the storm is going to be clinical in this game it will be more or less The first time they been especially clinical all season or at least certainly since the very beginning of the season to be honest i mean against the bulls in the first win in cape town i think they averaging one point per 22 entry or something like that maybe maybe not quite that bad but it was low began with a one so i'm trying to look what's the what's the kicking stats while you're looking just explain to me what you mean by clinical always people always talk about they need to be clinical i'm not sure exactly what it means it means that once once they get into a once there is a try scoring opportunity whether that's an intercept a line break or a platform close to leinster's line by platform i mean either a scrum or a line out or a tap and go they need to score they can't afford to have five of them and stuff up for they if they have five in the whole game they probably need to score so you mean convert it yes make it work kind of a thing don't make a mistake don't knock it on or lose possession or concede a turnover that's what means exactly exactly so that's what they need like i said paul the village is gonna have to have an amazing game i think damien villison is gonna have to have an amazing game and the pack are gonna have to front up because i don't want to say that the set piece is storm is only chance because it's a bit mean and there's two there's two games there's two teams in any game of rugby so there's always chances come from elsewhere but they need to they need to not concede the gain line which the stormers are generally quite good at doing they need to control the territory they need to make sure that leinster are playing not in their 22 because if they get to their 22 let's they go up a gear and leinster are very clinical usually they weren't so much in the in the championship final in the urc they are and yeah like i said they need to make the game as about set pieces as possible maybe even knock the ball on on purpose or something you know that kind of thing kick it out kick for line outs make them all you you know what i saw something today new zealand rugby union obviously will rapidly clarify um a couple of things one of them was that you remember last year against Italy, the box kicked on purpose not to make the 10-meter line, and just to add insult to injury, Andre Estrella was the hair of the kicker, to basically enforce a scrum. For the opposition, but on the kick-off spot.

Because the box, the spring box had such an advantage, and it was made very clear you can't break a rule deliberately, kind of a thing. This is a matter of interest, and they clarified that today. And the other thing that they clarified, I don't know if you saw that, it was just that the when they form a rock and you know that the caterpillar starts forming then the the scrum off would go in and take the ball out of his hands he's not actually supposed to do that he's supposed to use his feet and they asked the clarification for that as well so the world rugby said yes strictly speaking you have to use your feet but in interest of you know speeding the game along and you know not letting me lock the ball on or whatever you're just allowed to to take to use his hands to take it out yeah i remember seeing that at the beginning of the season that they were saying we're going to allow using your hands because exactly for that reason it's funny it was actually in a women's world cup game i saw the scrum half was at the back of a caterpillar rock and the referee said to her make sure to use your feet and the scrum half kept using her hands and then the referee said no use your feet and the scrum half kept using her hands and then she kicked the ball and the referee said play on yeah i mean there's an obsession with play on anyway yeah all right okay so if you like ask you for the bulls in the and and glasgow what do we need to look out for for the stormers and what should we look out for for lanes just you know to make them more make it more interesting it's all about the game line and again that's not very interesting rugby analysis i was watching an interview with johan van gran actually uh um the other day and he was saying like rugby is a simple game it's all about the game line so i'm giving you very simplistic insights of it's all about the game line but these are the two these might be the two most gain line teams in the urc all right before you go on tell us what gain line means exactly where is the gain line okay so the game line is a constantly shifting thing on the field so imagine you've got a ruck at some point and imagine the imagine you're looking at the pitch from side on and you've got the ruck somewhere on the field if you wherever that ruck is imagine a line going straight across the field through the middle of the rock through the middle of the rock okay so if the next time that you are tackled a player on your team is tackled if they are further towards the opposition gain um try line if they are further forward then they have crossed the gain line they have gone over the game line so the line is going across the field they have crossed it they've gone over it the next time that they are so they you know they have to go over the off in that halfway line between where the where the rock where the rock is formed and once they go over it that starts counting as a meter plus one plus two plus one yes yes or minus one minus two for that and if they get tackled behind where the last rock was then they've failed to cross the game line all right see always interesting to know these little technical things maybe if i was explained it to me it was explained to me before but i can't remember it's always a good excuse anyway you were saying sorry to interrupt you so these are the two teams if i just go to the attacking stats gain line dominance storm is a second in the world at the time that these stats were taken back in february and leinster aren't that high up actually but if i go to gain line percentage storm was a bit further down the leinster a bit further up so gain line percentage stormers are on 58% Leinster 59% What does it mean? 58% of times they would cross the gain line Yes, 58% of their carries they cross the gain line and then if I go to gain line denial then Leinster are the best in the world at 34% so gain line denial is you do not let your opposition cross the gain line because you tackle them really hard because of bloodstaffines behind the cover so Leinster are the best in the world 34 stormers are third best in the world 34 if we're rounding to the nearest whole so close that close yeah it's it's yeah i wanted to ask you something else leicester is well known for their attacking in several phases wave after working island to the degree as well stormers have the best defensive statistics in the competition you said it earlier in terms of trials conceded i think you said tied with glasgow so now you have you know you have immovable force meeting an unstoppable object kind of a thing how does that you know do the stormers stand a chance against you know this these wave of the wave of of leinster attacks how do they utilize that physically they stand a chance physically especially in in the early phases if they hit them early and drive them backwards then yes they stand a chance i wonder if leinster might be tempted to add another kind of pullback pass or another help the back pass to kind of avoid the initial smash of the stormers to avoid the first tackler and tackle someone else or make someone else tackle them and try and avoid that that way if they do come up with a plan i'll be interested to see if that is it um the the the thing about lens's attack though is it's very detailed and it's very complicated and so the stormers will need to be switched on and they'll need to scanning what kennedy told us all about they need to do a lot of scanning defensively and they need to be smart about how they use their aggression and i think that the stormer's best chance in this game is to win through aggression for sure okay now just in closing we've talked about talked about the 10 for the stormers quite a bit which is hughry matthew but who's going to be 10 for leicester is it sam pendergast or harry burn those are two different players as well predicate was in cape town when they lost so badly in the opening up in the game of the season i suppose he's got a score to settle and he's got a couple of points to prove i suppose you know i've sort of been sidelined yeah i really don't know that's probably the one position where i don't know i know kaylin doris is going to play lens to pick up a lot of injuries that's the other thing but i think that andrew porter and ty furlong are going to play dan sheehan's going to play joe mccarthy james rhine will play if that fits i'm not talking about who you think you think is going to play i'm asking who do you think is going to be the better player for lindster in this this this type of game um sam prendergas because he's his passing is better and his defense his defense is an issue but i'm not sure that the stormers are going to expose it in the other way and i think that avoiding the stormers smash squad the smashing stormers probably passing is a more important thing they might just play off nine and it doesn't even matter i just get jameson kids in parks to run the show yeah i think that's what was going to happen but i think better girls can be rattled you know if he gets turned over a couple of times right ran over a couple of times yeah it's gonna he's gonna start you know running scared of it so they're gonna send even ruiz at sam pranegas first opportunity a couple of times yeah and ben jason dixon i supposed to agree all right listen um in terms of your your prediction who's going to make it to the final yeah leinster again we're going to we're going to learn a lot from this game about the stormers i don't think we'll learn turns about leinster but we'll learn a lot about the storms from this game it's very difficult to judge because the storms have got so many injuries you just said as well yeah okay so you you're you're you're predicting a leinster glasgow final in dublin no in in in murrayfield at murrayfield that's interesting yes i'm predicting uh leinster bulls final in dublin i wouldn't be surprised i think i said a while ago that the vibe i was getting from the urc was that we are headed to another benster bulls final another rematch i wonder what the narrative if if the bulls went to a final against leinster and lost again what would the narrative be about Akers because then he's just done exactly what Jake did no he didn't he didn't his first year got to a final you know completely changed the style of play new coaches no I think he's he definitely earned it passing Mark people say it was the same team no it's not the same team it's maybe the sum of the same players but it's they play completely differently as you know no I think I think ask me about you know being biased or i think he's done exceptionally well i know what happened those first couple of months in the bulls it was tough and to get where they are now i think that that took some doing so i thought to him i think jake didn't have pollard did he no so an un an unkind person might say that akers took over jake's team that got to however many finals added hondre pollard and didn't when did under pollard joined the bulls actually started playing again for the bulls in this season where's the first time that you're not gonna make these spring box well i know that it was quite late but in december it's what people will say though i don't care what people will say i'm saying what what what the real thing is honestly honestly i think johan and darbo did exceptionally well i mean this is a long season um you're on like i said overall the car driving down the highway overall the engine through the exhaust if you ask me i think that's quite an apt analogy and i think he needs to be given credit for that honestly that's a happy team complete difference to what it was last year this time i have got a quiz for you who has thrown the more passes willy larue or or Sasha Feinberg and Gormazulu? Veli LaRue.

Yes. Who has thrown the more passes? Sasha Feinberg and Gormazulu or Sione Tupolotti? Well, you just said Sasha's not a passing fly-off, so I'd say, but Sione had to get the ball. Okay, Sione.

Sione Tupolotti has passed the ball more than Sasha Feinberg and Gormazulu this season. And he's a centre. Yes. So which means he would have had to be able to pass it more often than a fly-off. Yeah, it's probably an extreme case because as we've said earlier in the podcast, it's all about kind of that's Clasico's identity as we pass lots.

But according to this, if I've got a fight, yeah, according to this, Sasha has passed the ball 131 times. No, sorry, 129 times. And Sonia Superlotti has passed the ball 184 times. That's a big difference. but listen this is interesting statistics i mean if franco said they practice a thousand passes per practice session and they only make 130 passes the entire season 180 that that sounds off don't you think yeah i mean sasha's not in the top one percent for passes i'll tell you that much no i'm just saying as a percent let's say for argument's sake there's one practice session per week over 18 that's 18 000 passes and one player made 180 passes or 130 passes it's just doesn't sound the math don't add up in my head kind of a thing maybe okay maybe you practice something 10 times when you do it once maybe that's what it is 100 times in this for this in this instance i suppose anyway um i'm wobbling a little bit let's uh let's wrap this up anything else you wanted to add what you're looking forward to you be an icon like i said we're going to be doing with very uh uh okay reaction the bulls game and then we're going to do a post-game reaction with the storm as lancor with pat mccary a lancor friend and he's licking his lips he says i saw just now um you know letting us know a jock our jock loving south africans he's going to tell us our story a bit or two so we're looking forward to that uh yeah i have a podcast coming out on sunday a deep diving the english premiership and what the changes off the field are happening there that's with will kelleher the writer for the times which is really good i recorded that today um so keep an eye out for that after i've edited it and uploaded it and uh okay stay tuned to my other socials because i'm going to a women's rugby match this weekend hopefully all things going well and there will be vlogs and things um coming out from that all right and then talking about sunday i'm going to post uh an interview paul and i did with Jimmy Stonehouse, coach of the Pumas.

This is a nice one. You'll like it. I'm not going to edit anything, you know, thumb across the camera and everything. He's such a good guy. I love that.

And then we're also going to be publishing the next episode of the Too Blessed to be Stressed podcast with Libby Janssen von Reisburg and Rubandi. So, yeah, awesome, man. Thanks to you. Appreciate it. It was fun, as always.

Cheers, mate. Appreciate it. Thanks, man. This is the Loose Pass Rugby podcast only on Megaphone Rugby. Thank you.

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