"I Found the Formula. 57 Stormers Tries Proves It" | Loose Pass Rugby Podcast

This is the Loose Pass Rugby Podcast, only on Megaphone Rugby. Welcome back to the Loose Pass Rugby Podcast. A grumpy Hugh Griffin and an even grumpier Enver sitting here tonight, staring each other down the camera. I'm kidding, Hugh. Welcome back.

Yeah, I am grumpy today. It's not Enver's fault, it's my fault. I don't even really know why I'm grumpy. I was just out in the garden doing garden stuff, and I've come inside and I'm grumpy, and I've got no good reason. So at least I get to use my favourite Afrikaans word, ghatful.

But I don't know why I'm ghatful. Well, I'm also grumpy, and I also don't know why I'm grumpy. I think it's been a long day for both of us, I suppose. Anyway, it wasn't such a long day for the Stormers, and it was a very long day for the Glasgow Warriors last Saturday, and you've got loads of stuff lined up for us. I mean, you've been slamming the Stormers a little bit, and you've been, I want to use the word, delicately backtracking, maybe?

Well, no, this is exactly it. This is exactly it, because I saw the score. I didn't get to watch the game live because I was out and about on Saturday. um and i uh so i saw the school line and i was like i've criticized the stormers quite a lot lately was i wrong and so i was like do i need to backtrack and stuff so i watched the full game back afterwards see what happens and i'm delighted to report everybody that i was not wrong um and that this rather than being the stormers being different in any way in this game was the the most Stormers performance that we've seen so far this season. So as part of my research, Enver, I went back this week and I watched every single try the Stormers have scored in the URC so far this season.

Every single one. All 57. And I codified them using my own logic codes. Where did they come from? Moles?

Who scored them? Things like that. if people disagree with what i said if there's any stormers analysts watching hi um feel free to go back and watch them yourselves if you disagree with me almost coaches i i am just one source of information i freely encourage people to go and consider other sources of information as well you don't have to believe what i say so and there question for you who is the stormers top try scorer this season oh my word i have absolutely no idea if i had to venture against probably sasha no i have no idea so according to the urc website it's evan ruas with 11. however that's not true either because the real top scorer hang on i need to do it with my pen because this is serious talk the real top scorer for the top the stormers this season is maul 13 tries that the stormers have scored in the urc so far this season have come directly from from the mall 13 out of 57 and uh i also went and i looked and i saw that the ones that didn't come directly from a mall at least uh 10 came within three phases of a mall so the mall went down and like inches from the line and they bashed their way over after less than three phases so you're saying 23 out of 57 is uh scored via a mall and then you add in six that i counted which come directly from scrums zero phases after a scrum you're up to 29 so that's over half already over half of all the stormers tries to come from either malls um uh within three phases of all or directly from a scrum and guess what in this game against glasgow where did they come from there's two tries from a mall uh there was 11 tries sorry two tries from a mall one try from evan ruis which was set up by sasha feinberg and gomazulu and by my count sasha is top for try involvements for the stormers with 12 this season ergo it was the most stormers game so far the other stat that i came up with was that of the stormers 57 tries so far this season 31 of them by my count again i encourage people to go back and check 31 of those 57 was scored without a single ruck occurring from when their possession started whether that be a maul or from the scrum or from a kick return whatever it is a transition over 50 of their uh tries come without a ruck occurring in the possession which is kind of goes back to what dobbo was saying about transitions and make sense and i think that a lot of teams would tell you i think i've heard another team talk about how whenever they make a line break for every ruck that happens after that line break the chances of them scoring a try drops by half or something like that so rocks are bad for converting line breaks and things so that kind of tells us like what kind of game plan um that the storms want to play and i looked up this kind of sequence from earlier in the season for stormers tries this is just kind of making the point of i was right so from their last try against the ospreys this is the sequence of stormers tries and how they were scored okay so from the last try against the Os Rage in round two was a maul and then the first try in the next game was a maul plus one ruck then straight from a maul then a maul plus two rucks then a maul plus one ruck then direct from a scrum then a maul and then an up and under which was fumbled Sasha scoops it up and runs under no no rucks next one was a maul plus one ruck next one was a scrum next one was an intercept next one we're on we're three games later now was a maul plus three rucks and then a maul plus three rucks and then a stolen opposition line out five meters from the line one rock and they scored and then um more plus two rucks so i worked out that in uh 11 sorry in 10 games they had 11 direct mall tries which is pretty remarkable i don't think any team in club rugby maybe some of the teams in france like montpelier or clermont last year might have had a hit rate like that glasgow may be at their peak but no that is pretty remarkable reliability from a mall yeah more than one direct mall try per game from the stormers and glasgow isn't glasgow supposed to be the mall kings if i can call it that well they were last season they seem to be less so this year when we get into the clips that i've got ready to to be lined up um we'll we'll see the very marked difference i've got an example of a glasgow attack against an example all the examples of the stormers attacks that i've got and you'll see just how different they are but in this game against glasgow the stormers went fucking direct really really that's a surprise yeah yeah sorry yeah okay really really really direct so um in the game against glasgow the stormers had 61 rucks in the whole game which is slightly on the low so i've not unheard of low but it's quite low and the stormers had 82 passes for 84 carries so more ball carries than passes for context the glas glasgow had 99 carries for 139 passes so call it 1.5 passes per carry the stormers had less than one pass per carry so it was really really really direct another one of my uh predictions that was completely right on for this game was i didn't think the stormers would evade many glasgow tackles and they didn't they only evaded 19 which isn't very many that's but hardly any whereas glasgow evaded far more of the stormers tackles obviously that didn't yield to tries we know that uh but the stormers did smash the glas glasgow at scrum and mall time which i did predict especially with the injuries that they've got so anyway that's a long-winded way of saying i wasn't wrong in fact i was more right than i ever thought that i was in the first place anyway shall we get into talking into looking at some clips yeah go for it okay i'm giving mv a work to do in the edit room now okay so the big talking point from this game of solmas versus glasgow was villamster being moved back to fullback and i saw the clip that you put out of harry asking dobbo about that and giving the the logic for transitions and getting the scraps and attacking off transitions and villamster being the best in the air and stuff and i've got some clips lined up where we'll talk about that but first i just want to remind us why having williams at fullback is in my opinion or having villains more specifically closer to sasha as close to sasha as possible is so important and why the connection between those two when those two are able to interact with each other more yields such good results for the stormers so this is a clip as you can see from the sharks game the first sharks game this year this is direct from a kickoff so you talk about scraps so this is one where the storm was challenged in the air they get the scraps and then they go through a couple of passes they got a knock on advantage here it was also birth pointing out that it wasn't who challenged in the air it was someone else and they kind of make a big meterage there and then there's no rucks here and you can see so i it's i think it's rouen nell no not now who is it the center yeah it's rouen nell the center he stood at first receiver then i think this is clans stood at second receiver and then it goes to sasha here at third receiver so that's we'll come on to stats about sasha's passing a little bit later on this is williams are down here wearing the number 12 jersey in this game so sasha hits the hole he runs through and then he puts williams away in the corner so that's an example of the two of them linking up later on in the same game you remember this one from the tap and go against the sharks sasha taps it passes it into williams that only williams who is on the same wavelength gets it to him and he scores i think williams he gets injured in that moment there so that's examples of these two working together these two being on the same wavelength this is an example now against the glasgow game so we've talked about the scraps we talked about villamsa in the air and how dobbo felt that he needed to move them onto the wing to get the most of out of him in the air well this is the glasgow game with villamsa playing at 15 so glasgow have kicked to the stormers sasha is back in the backfield to cover it and i advise people that if they're not already aware of this i'm sure lots of people are people to watch how sasha covers the backfield he often drops to the wing when covering the backfield so that he can take kicks like this sasha puts up and under up and under for Willemse to chase.

So it's caught just about by Kyle Steyn, friend of the show. But Willemse gets over the ball and Willemse wins the turnover here And there a penalty to the Stormers So this is an example of even though Willemse is not a fullback he still been able to work directly with sorry even though Willemse is not on the wing, he's still been able to work directly with Sascha to yield a positive result for the team. On to the next clip that's loading here. So this is for what was nearly a try for the Stormers. So they're bashing away the Glasgow line.

again look at where willem sir is he's not out on the wing he stood here at first receiver if i just take it back a touch you can see sasha and willem sir is right on his on his shoulder willem sir like i said if he was playing on the wing wouldn't be anywhere near this position and they have a chat between them and they decide that willem sir is going to stand up at first receiver here he gets the ball i guess this is closer to standing at 12 than at 15 really and he uses his footwork and he damn near gets over the line here very very close to getting over the line again another example here villemsa comes in to stand at first receiver and sasha shuffles out one and he's standing at what might be considered 12 second receiver anyway and he passes the ball to simulani and play on from there another example villemsa feels this high ball again not on the wing but still in position to field the high balls passes it to Sasha Sasha makes the line break and then film series there to clean out and then once again the stormers win the penalty so this is examples this is just in the first 25 minutes of the game the closer that Sasha and villains are together the more good things happen and then I'm just trying to remember which next clip it is um I can't remember which one this is this is them working okay so this next clip this is them working together again this is sasha gets uh an opportunity to thread a ball through from a grubber so it comes out from the mall again again no rucks go straight to sasha out the boots very common things you can see the villain series here waiting for it and sasha puts it on the toe and it's doesn't quite get executed perfectly but it's villain so who's looking for it again examples of them two working together being too close together even this one which is quite similar so this is the stormers try that takes them over the 30 mark this is a great try fantastic vision and execution from sasha so glasgow are down to two men at the moment um i don't know how glasgow exact sorry guys go down to 14 men at the moment i don't know exactly how glasgow set up their backfield but it's their fly half on the pitch so in some systems that means there's more space in the backfield and this is the one where sasha throws the kick through fantastic kick through absolutely brilliant execution and now dots it down and you're thinking what's that got to do with williamsah hugh well look where williamsah is again you can see the screen from the stormers forwards here to give sasha the time to execute this film says here he's the next option and you can see that glasgow have to watch him so even when williamsah is not involved he's at least a little bit involved and it's leading to good things so those are the points that i'm trying to make of how getting williamsah in these positions where he's closer to sasha and he's able to be the link with sasha and the rest of the team yielding good things. And this is what I think that they were missing when Willemse was out on the wing. And Dobbo, I think, in his interview with Harry, took his medicine on that and was like, yeah, okay, we need to move Willemse back to a position where he can have more influence on the game. All right, that's interesting. I like the fact that you're so sure that you were right.

And I did get the impression that Dobbo was eating apple pie about Damien Willemse. I think he said that they had a gap to fill for those three games and Damien was willing to step up to it. But now that he moved him back was the crisis or the opportunity kind of a kind of pause didn't you didn't you hear that i did but i'm i think he was he was giving he was forcing himself to fight with one arm time behind his back with by moving villains to into position where he's going to touch the ball so much less he's one of the best players in the world and he's having a position where he's touching the ball a lot in my opinion no you all right let's have some more stormers magic against glasgow let's see what So this is an example of what Dobbo was talking about, about attacking off transitions and getting the scraps. So the high ball's gone up from Glasgow. They compete for it.

It's not caught cleanly. Again, this is another example where it's not Willem, sir. It's involved in this, but the Storm has still managed to win the scraps. Nell picks it up. On watching the game back, I had to say that I thought that Nell had a very, very good game.

And I'm sure if I went back and watched in greater detail the rest of the season, I would see that he's been very effective. I think he's probably a bit of an unsung hero for the Stormers. So he gets it to Kobus. Kobus, we know about his pace. Look at Sasha here.

This is obviously Sasha's incredible athleticism. He wasn't even in shot previously. And now he's making up incredible ground. And what did I say previously about where the Stormers' tries come from? They come from Mauls, they come from Ruiz, and they come from Sasha.

Well, we've got a transition here. And Sasha sets up Ruiz to run it under the sticks. So literally, if you take Maul, Ruiz, and Sasha, you're up to well over 50 percent of the tries that the stormers score now something that i've criticized the stormers for a little bit is lacking set plays so i found in the game two examples of little cute set plays here they're not massively intricate or flashy but like this one the stormer's use of the blind side is really interesting i've got more examples of this later on so they take one contact and then they go back blind side again and you can see that they've got a four versus two here and again it's now that man now takes the ball pops it on and it's a line break and that's um gets very close to scoring this one this is one that harry pulled up so this is what i think he called it a two one three no two three two three one from the stormers in terms of a tap play again no rucks involved in this they tap it pulls it back to in junior in junior who's had a fantastic season and he gets over the try line so that's another kind of rehearsed move it's a little bit soft from glasgow but it's nice and cute from the stormers i do appreciate it something else that i picked up by pouring over all of the stormers tries for this season so far is what i'm calling the bishop's blind side now the stormers might not thank me for this i just want to make it clear no one affiliated with the stormers or no one who told talk to the stormers told me about this so if it is a thing then i've just stumbled across it by myself and if i've seen it and i'm just some guy on the internet i'm sure some professional opposition coaches have seen it anyway so this is what i'm calling the bishop's blind side so harry's two favorite halfbacks imi khan and sasha feinberg and gomazulu the way that they engineer tries on the blind side for the stormers and i've got examples of them doing it individually and together so this first one from early on in the season is against zebra so the stormers have gotten very close to zebra's line again this all comes from a moor you can see there's that great mass of bodies there and they're setting up to what they're going to do next and you what i want you to watch for is the players flashing across to the blind side here so the blind side in this case is on the left so they flash across there they're still looking like they might pick and go to the right and then sasha here has flashed across he gets the ball he's got one man to beat and he flops over the line it meant i've made it sound easy saying that it's great footwork and great finishing from sasha you know he's beaten a guy a phone box to be able to to be able to score that try this next one is against the scarlet this time it's imi khan doing it on himself this is right at the end of the game the sashay sorry the scarlet are down to 14 men it's a scrum direct from a scrum the referee calls use it and imi khan is one-on-one essentially with the scarlet scrum half he uses the man outside him to draw it and he finishes in the corner again a simple first phase move off the blind side this next one is an example of imi khan and sasha working together the bishop's blindside combining so this is a dragon against the dragons again a maul it's a little bit untidy because the ball drops to the floor there and the referee calls use it imi khan takes his opposite number roger williams on the outside he didn't have a great game he has to be said he could have probably gone himself here you know probably could have scored if he wanted to but gets the out the back door to sasha who does score the track and then the next one i'm going to show you an example of something very similar against glasgow again imi khan playing nine in the 21 jersey the stormers get the go forward at scrum time as you would expect them to do they get a penalty advantage the ball comes out to imi khan he draws to a piloto and then sasha simple finish the bishop's blind side in absolute action so that's an example of those two working together and a repeating pattern that we've seen over the season i'm sure if i watch back the full 80 of lots of games this season i would see more examples of them at least trying to execute it and i think it's a cute little thing that they've worked on blindside is an underused thing in rugby underused it's not an often used thing in rugby teams would be expecting it and it means that the likes of imi khan and sasha are getting more tries that way especially off first phase that's interesting and imi khan is probably going to get more uh opportunities to play now of course looks like he's going to be out for about three months or so yeah it's not an acl is it he said it's not an acl but it is in the injury i saw somewhere today it's going to be it's going to be about three months you should be ready by the end of july which you know for the all-black tour maybe maybe not he'll be ready for the all-black tour you won't miss that um i want to now talk about sasha's game a little bit because the stats that really jumped out to me when i looked at this was that sasha in this game against glasgow passed the ball five times which is less than half of any other starting fly half in the urc this weekend next lowest was dan edwards for the ospreys passed it 11 times and he spends 10 minutes off the pitch getting uh treatment for a blood injury and he spent another 10 minutes off the pitch uh for a yellow car so that's how little sasha passed the ball and this created i posted this on twitter and it got quite a bit of traction i was a little bit surprised of just how much of a narrative this is about Sasha now, that he doesn't pass the ball. Well, we were saying that for a while now with Marnie, you know, being able to get the back line away better, remember? But you also said, apart from the fact that he only passed five times, that he carried nine times and he kicked 15 times.

What does that mean? Well kicking 15 times is also the most of any URC fly half this weekend just gone I think the next highest was 11 again I can remember who exactly it was I think it might have been Hawkins or Pollard. Might have been both. I'll check later. But, yeah, it's a lot of kicking.

And if you go back and you watch the game, a lot of the kicks that he does, you could call a bit speculative. Like he tries a lot of grubbers and he went for the up and unders that I showed earlier. Those examples to Villamble that I showed earlier. he got two try assists in this game um which is quite funny five passes two of them with try assists but the i think that comes down to the storm's game plan probably i'm sure if they asked him to play a different way he would play a different way but what dole talks about them always wanting those transitions that they and the best way to get transitions is from kicks and it's just kick the ball you know rather than passing it and passing and passing it just kick the ball and see if we win those scraps so that's quite interesting but thing is if you're sasha like you've only passed the ball five times but look what he can do if he doesn't pass the ball so this is uh in the second half against glasgow again from a mall imi khan passes in the ball and he makes his beeline for this is adam hastings here the glasgow fly half and he goes straight for him now look how adam hastings has come off the line there sasha's got the ball here he's got nail on his outside and he just tucks the shoulder and it goes straight at hastings and that's a i'd be interested to hear what a defensive coach thinks of this contact the kind of position that hastings is in but look at this when was the last time you saw a fly half carry like this shrugs off hastings shrugs off to pelotty and then wins the contact with a third player there so it's cool if you don't pass but if you can ball carry like that and there how many other fly halves in the world do you know who can carry the ball like that. Do you notice his arms?

How big his arms have you got? He must be doing a lot of work in the gym or something because he's incredibly strong, it seems like. I mean, there's a reason that he can play inside the center, isn't there? Absolute reason. Incredible ability.

Right. This last clip from this game that I wanted to show is an example of how different Glasgow's attack is to the Stormers. So this is an example of Glasgow nearly going 60 meters through the phases and very very nearly scoring a try and for me and there this was where the game was lost for glasgow this is where they lost the game so stormers are down to 14 men at the moment stain feels the ball this is a double speed which is why it looks a bit funny and glasgow play from here so they're evading tackles and they're playing the ball going through many many rucks we've already had one ruck we're about to have a second they're up to the 10 meter line here and we can just kind of talk over this this is like franco ball this is glasgow ball this is Glasgow probably do better than anybody else. Asher makes the break here. A big meter gain.

Steyn gets on the ball again. They're 10 meters from the Stormers line now. They go wide, wide, get the ball to the edge. Again, they're up over the five meters. So this is the kind of thing that Glasgow do a lot that we don't really see the Stormers even try and do.

The Stormers don't attack from their own half like this. Now it's into bash mode. Now it's into getting the ball to your big ball carriers, slower rock ball to try and get over the line. and this for me this moment coming up is where they lose the game so the ball gets passed out and it's a knock on there we go they've knocked the ball on and the storm has come away from it from their own line they try and play out and your man gets knocked clean out by Hastings in that moment and for me I just want to say that I think this should have been a red card I don't see what the mitigation is here I think this should have been a clear red card for this you can see Sparko on the floor game over see you later Hastings then gets the yellow card which like I said should have a red it goes off to the bunker stormers go down the other end with the man advantage and score and then that's game over so that for me it's a great example of how glasgow's attack is so different from stormers and it's also for me in this game this is the moment where glasgow lost it and the stormers went on to win it even though they won that they lost that far i mean 48 well it was 48 12 i mean would that have made such a big difference or we you know you know was it did it take the wind out of the sails a bit or why do you say that specifically that one incident i yeah wind out the sales i think if guys go get over there if that ball isn't knocked on i think that the warriors probably score and then they're back within 10 and then they've got all the momentum and they crucially hasting doesn't go on to knock that guy out and get sent off and then give the stormers the man advantage so i think it's a very different game you know maybe the stormers do go on and win anyway but i think that's the moment where it was game over let's go on to the one game that you and i both had a very very vested interest in and that was the bulls versus scarlet and i was very cocky and I said the Bulls will win by 20 points and you said the Schalers are going to beat the Bulls by 2. You were right about the 2 but the wrong way around luckily for me.

But that was touch and go, squeaky bum time like Harry calls it. What did you see in that game? And some of the clips you sent me about Schalers kicking the leather off the ball as well. Talk to us about that game. I would have been right if the Schalers had gotten 2 of their 3 conversions that they missed, missed all 3 conversions, then we would have won by 2.

And I would have looked extremely clever and uh i think i didn't watch johan's full interview joan ackerman's full interview afterwards but i think he kind of said you know we're lucky to just get the w and get out of here to be honest uh you did score a great try in the second half that was chalked off for a forward pass um but that was great rugby and i wish i had clipped that up because it was absolutely amazing rugby more close to glasgow rugby than stormers rugby um but by who scotlets or the bulls by the bulls okay just checking because the scholars are your team yeah no yeah um and i think i think that the bulls got lucky because us missing our conversions isn't a controllable from you if we'd have gotten at least one of our conversions that we'd have drawn and uh yeah so i think it's it's okay to say that there was fortune favored you in that game now if that only happens in one game you can say okay we got lucky in that one game let's forget about it go home never speak of it again if it keeps happening then you got to worry when it comes to playoff time but we shall see we shall see what happens um i was pretty happy with how the scarlet's performed i'm frustrated that we seem to be a team that's like x minus one it's however good the team that we're playing against um we're just like 10 worse than that so if we're playing against like the best team in the world we're like 90 the best team in the world and if we're playing against the worst team in the world were like 90 the worst team in the world like that's frustrating from a scarlet's fans point of view also i think the benches had a massive impact we had teenagers and semi-pros on our bench and you had willie larue and covers visa so it was a little bit unfair when it got to the last 20 minutes that your bench was quite a lot stronger than ours no i hear you let's talk about the tactics you were you know telling me beforehand that maybe the scholars are going to target the bulls from in the air do a lot of kicking and they did in fact do a lot of kicking maybe not just up and under a lot of you know downfield kicks and the likes talk to me about that game plan what that showed you about weaknesses on the bull side yeah so i've got a couple of clips here to talk about uh the scarlet's kicking against the bulls and how it was so effective so this was evident from very early on and the first guy that i'm going to show you blair murray i thought that he had an excellent game watching the game back i thought that he wasn't maybe the most razzle dazzle that he's ever been but i thought that every touch that he had was very very good and he used blair's big left boot trademarks to excellent effects so first thing that they did uh first kick and there's lots of examples of this it goes long and he splits the bulls backfield so if you do a if you do a two-man backfield that's something that can happen a lot you can be split and from there i think pollard concedes a scarlet's line out in their half he just kicks it out from there this next one joe hawkins hooves the ball long that's off for a turnover again a transition and the scarlet's get a 50-22 off it another excellent long kick this one from hawkins again kicks it long again splits your backfield the bulls are now backtracking and i think again pollard concedes a line out in his own half from it this one's slightly more tactical goes more to the touchline very close to getting a 50-22 from that one and that's a start scarlet's line out well sorry a bulls line out on their own 22 we also used grubber kicks a locked this one is very unlucky from blair murray this one ends up going dead but a slightly different bounce a bit closer to the line and that's a scarlet's line out five meters from the bulls line another one from blair murray here excellent long kick clears it up to halfway from his own 22 this one from joe roberts another 50 22 in this game from his own half grubber kicks it down and exploits that space in behind the bulls wingers and then another one here from blair murray getting up to halfway and the final one is from our replacement fullback yohan jones he kicks it long again goes very long again splits the bulls backfield and that was a great way that the scarlet's used to control territory against the bulls we only gave you the bulls three entries into our 22 meters in the whole game only three and interestingly we only gave you three puttins of the scrum in the whole game of your own pudding there was more than three scrums where there's only three on your put-in which was massive and i think that really denied the bulls a platform to use because you had our number at scrum time you're the bulls you have everybody's number at scrum time and not having those put-ins and what was interesting as well is there was a couple of times where you had scrum advantage from a knock-on and you played and then you lost the advantage so i think maybe that's a bit of learning maybe ambrose papilla needs a bit of a flea in his ear after this one saying if you if you're in a tight game and you've got a scrum advantage and the scrum is our major advantage a major point of difference against this opposition take the scrum brood yeah but how do you get the how do you take this from you know he's playing advantage here you deliberately make a mistake maybe or knock it on i think you can turn to the referee and say we'll take the scrum please i'm not sure that you can it's a good question actually we must find out about that because i hear you i see your point i mean it obviously makes sense I'm just saying how do you actually enforce it then if I can call it that you know it's yeah that's an interesting one. Iceman Pollard I mean once again the difference for the bulls showing what he was actually made of and he coming into his own now in this bull side don you think he playing so much better he fitting into the pattern and talking about his attacking stats a bit people are saying that he can only kick you know his piles behind sasha and everybody else is he really his point of difference is still his kicking and he obviously his goal kicking points this season wasn't great and he had a few bad games especially at lofters but he's pulled it out of the fire when it really matters in this game he engaged world cup pollard mode and has kicked some great kicks in recent games and i think when we spoke to neil he said that when we get closer to playoff time, they're going to need as much of that as possible. I think that, you know, the most expansive rugby that the Bulls played was still when Vili LaRue came off the bench and started giving those kick passes and that extra vision. I still think that's his superpower. So I don't necessarily think that Pollard is turning into Manny by any stretch.

I still think that, you know, compared to Sacha and Manny, his thing is still, his kicking, his tactical side of his game and his defensive robustness is still you know he's still hondre pollard you know aleph is not going to change his spots to be honest and his temperament and his temperament yes i think that's quite an important thing not to you know lose sight of all right let's talk about the uh the upcoming champions cup and challenge cup finals and what we're actually saying is we're not going to talk about it and um i'll tell you why just now because of mafrican's word but before we get to that talk Talk to me about super rugby a little bit. You've got something to say about super rugby. It's all been happening down in super rugby. So if anybody's not aware, because I know you South Africans love to keep an eye on what the Kiwis are up to without you, how they can't possibly cope without you. It's all been a bit crazy.

And I've been watching a lot of podcasts and stuff. And people are talking quite negatively about super rugby. So they've had the whole thing with Moana Pacifica going out of existence. So it's going to go down to a 10-team league. and every podcast that i've watched and every like shorter video that i've watched about the situation seems to be saying that they don't think that this iteration of super rugby is going to last forever they think that the league is going to need another shake-up in in five years whether they need to bring more um teams in or they need to relook at the format they need to increase the number of games you know go to a double round robin revisit the playoff format whatever it is everyone seems to agree that super rugby needs a bit of a change and it feels like there's a bit of an exodus going on in super rugby at the moment now we know that you know kiwis and aussie players get poached by northern hemisphere teams every single year it's not new it's not going to change and it's not like it's top line all blacks that are leaving but it does feel like that kind of next layer of kind of emerging talent in super rugby it's just getting picked off easier than it used to be and this thing with going down a team especially in new zealand they're losing a pathway there and people might not think here but there are a good handful of players even in the few seasons that they've existed that's got their break with moana pacifica and have gone on to become all blacks or are going to go on to become all blacks so that's interesting to me and just like how many players scotland are taking and how many are going to france and stuff it It feels like a lot.

Specifically, the top tri-scorer in Super Rugby this season, plays for the Hurricanes, has signed to play for Newcastle, the worst team in England next season. So not only is he leaving Super Rugby, but he's not going to be available to the All Blacks. And if I just talk about the Scarlets, Blair Murray and Tane Plumtree both were playing NPC in New Zealand and have gone on to represent Wales at test match level since they moved to the Scarlets. and Fletcher Anderson who again was playing NPC had a couple of Crusaders appearances has now gone on to be basically the best number eight in the URC and it was probably on for being Scarlet's player of the year and that's just the Scarlet's examples so I just have a feeling that someone in New Zealand is taking their eye off the ball a little bit I don't think that they're really concentrating on super rugby in terms of how do we make this the best competition possible and i read a quote in um an australian newspaper saying that's the uh new zealand rugby union the australian rugby union don't necessarily make super rugby decisions for the benefit of super rugby it's always for the benefit of the test teams which is their prerogative but it does mean you know when super rugby is not the best it could be you can't complain because you haven't made decisions based on that and you're getting just this layer of players just always leaving going abroad and doing very well abroad jameson ginsman park and james lowe being the two main examples of this so is the talent id and is the kind of process in new zealand really doing what it needs to be because if you look at new zealand right now cam roigard is their main scrum half below that it's a real big drop off to the next guy so are they looking at jameson ginsman park and thinking maybe we shouldn't let that guy go do they really have loads of depth at number eight or at fullback you know did that when they're seeing these guys go abroad and be incredibly successful are they having any meetings in new zealand and saying do we need to revisit kind of our criteria of who we spot as talent id is it a little bit by numbers and that's hence we're not getting you know much diversity of players coming through or are they just like ah you know new zealand is the best and if you can't make it in new zealand of course you can make it abroad because it's lower level harry plumber harry plumber the fly half i mean look at what's going on with the new zealand fly half situation it's like bodin barrett and damian mckenzie and there's plenty of people who think that neither of those guys is the guy at this moment whereas harry plumber has left the blues he's gone abroad to play for claremont he's having an unbelievable season but they can't pick him because they don't pick abroad players so i just think that they need to have a bit of a shake up in new zealand they need to sit down and go look we are losing players to the northern hemisphere every single year and so many of them being huge successes are we really can we really comfortably sit here and say oh it's just because you know they it's easier to make it abroad than it is in new zealand or is there something wrong with our pathway here yeah it's an interesting thing because you can't like you said if you go abroad you can't be picked for new zealand and and in the past it was a bit of a deterrent and it doesn't seem to be a deterrent anymore is that because the all blacks have lost some of their luster maybe if they've really starts turning the fortunes around and it becomes a thing to play for the all blacks again you might see a bit of a reverse migration almost if i can call it that you know there's a reason why people the players are leaving apart from the money i suppose i mean and obviously new zealand doesn't have all the you know the deep pockets that they need to have to keep everybody in new zealand i don't know because new zealand have been quite active obviously they've got the the murray all blacks and they've got the all blacks 15 which which has been quite active in recent years. But there just seems to be a lot of players just giving up all-backs caps to go north.

And, you know, it's their prerogative. Maybe they think they'll be like Leicester Fai and Inoukou, go and get the big bucks for a few years and then come back and then get their all-backs caps that way. But it's very close to a World Cup. Maybe it's that point in the cycle where they're saying, like, you're not going to get a shot this side of the World Cup. So they're going up for a couple of years and then coming back and they'll target the next World Cup or something like that.

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