The Bulls’ Plans Look Brilliant… Why Is It Failing?

And the Bulls are too ambitious, they're not able to do the thing they're trying to do. They have talked themselves into this ability and then you look at the actual fundamentals and MVA these guys are not able to play this brand of rugby at the top level. They're just not, it's ambition without competence. This is the coach, I mean let's be honest, three finals in four years, played in this very same final only a couple of months ago and now they've lost seven in a row. Don't come out to press conference and say I don't know why we lost, don't say that.

Do not say that, touches per error. So how many times do I have to touch the ball with my hands before I make an error? The Bulls, that's 40th out of 40, that's the worst error rate in 40 teams. And once again we're hearing stories about we should not be critical, we should be kumbaya and stick by the guys and stand by them. This is the highest points that he scored against the Bulls at Loftus in the modern era, ever.

Don't tell me there's not a crisis. Welcome to this special Dragsburg episode of the Lucky Rugby Pod, episode 138 or so. I mean let's start off with why we didn't do something on the Stormers yesterday. We had you out in London at the stoop and everything all set up and then technology interfered. You're in some mountains there with limited resources and one shop to go hat in hand.

It's actually a wonder, it's amazing that we're talking right now. Maybe it was one of those, what do you call it, tender mercies, that we didn't have to watch you recover. Yeah, everybody had his Stormers jersey on and everything. I'll have a joke about this because it's Vodacom that went off here and just like the Vodacom Bulls, Vodacom's network was washed away this weekend literally, but I'll leave that for later. We're going to talk about the Bulls later on, but first let's start with the Sharks and the Stormers.

You said you have little one-liners. You know what went wrong with those two. You know exactly what to do, what they should do. Let's hear it. Yeah, so if we take the contrast of fortunes of these three teams, it's interesting because what happened to the Stormers was you know, the value of depth is more fully exemplified when you have, whatever it was, 50, 60 test caps in team against 280 with Guido Petty.

And no slight on Connor Evans, who I think is going to be a fine luck. He's not at the same stage of development as Guido Petty. And when you take out Kubas Reinach, Sasha, you take out Springbok game player, game decision makers, and up against Marcus Smith and that sort. And you can see that there's a tactical nature of the Champions Cup. So fair play to Dobson.

Dobbo came on and he was very upset, but fair play to do what he did by leaving 20 Stormers at home, not going to snow from 80 degrees to snow and back. Not away in late. They lay in wait for the Leicester Tigers, winning you in a home playoff. I think even if a losing bonus point gets you in. So that's fine.

That season is going the way it is. But it's just a stark reminder of how depth can work away from home. When you don't have proven cohesive hooker playing to the second choice in the line out to Dovenacher, who's probably at the end of the career up against... So I get all that. Sharks, I literally think they're not ambitious enough.

I think it just comes down to that. I watch them and I say, why are you doing the same thing over and over and over? You have the ball, good clean ball at the 30 meter line attacking to the red zone and you kick it up and everyone knows you're going to do it. And so first one is Stormers still need depth to be a top, top team. Sharks need ambition to actually play the way they could play.

And the Bulls are too ambitious. I got to tell you, my friend, the Bulls are trying to play a game that the Bristol Bears can play, but they are not doing any game planning. They play the same way for everyone. So it's the opposite of the Sharks. They're doing everything the same for everyone, but they're not able to do the thing they're trying to do.

It's like you're watching someone in business, maybe in a business you know very well. Our listeners are all across the board in the ways that they make a buck. And you can see someone who's overshot. They've cashed checks. They put checks that they cannot cash.

They're just a little bit ahead out of the skis. They have talked themselves into this ability. And then you look at the actual fundamentals and MVF, these guys are not able to play this brand of rugby at the top level. They're just not. They can play another brand that will do quite fine, that was doing quite fine, actually.

But this one, it's ambition without competence. I just want to briefly go back to the Stormers one second there. Something we need to keep in mind about sending, let's call it the B team overseas, is last week's derby. The first thing we said about that derby was how physical it was. We must remember that.

You can't send these guys all the way over to England in the snow after having played that derby, most of them. And the next week coming, playing against Leicester Tigers as well. And I suppose the Lions did agree, the Sharks did agree on the same thing. But anyway, about the Bulls. Lots of talk about this weekend.

Is it the coach? Is it the players? I see some of our journalistic colleagues, let's call them that, said the players have to step up and now take responsibility. Twelve of them went to Edgar Afburn and Willem Straus, complaining about Jake. And those very same players are now not delivering.

Is it the players' fault? You just mentioned the plans, the playing. Is it the coach? I mean, let's be honest. Three finals in four years, played in this very same final only a couple of months ago.

And now they've lost seven in a row. I mean, you said something about the game plan and everything else. But point it out to one thing that you see, because I mean, just falling off a cliff is cataclysmic. Yeah, so it's lazy thinking, no disrespect to anyone who said this, to say the players must also step up. It's a complicated thing.

But when you're in a professional sport and you have these given players, they're contracted, you know what they can do, you have stats on them, you know how high they can jump, how quick they can reload, you know how their speed works. You absolutely know their hand speed and their ability to catch and not put it down. And you inherit this. And you have analytics that we don't even really privy to. You have deeper analytics than we have.

And I'm just going to use now analytics that are available on Opta. And then I've extracted them and I've messed them around a bit to make sure I can understand them and then manipulate them in a way that I think will make sense. The basic problem for the Bulls is they're trying to do a thing that sounds wonderful on paper. It sounds brilliant on paper. Reminds me of that old commentator, Afrikaans commentator, who would describe a guy lining up a kick, just prachtig, you know, like he was talking about how beautiful the kick is.

It's the most beautiful kick I ever saw. And then he missed. And at some point, if you have plans that are prachtig, but they only end in tears, and then you deconstruct why, then you have to look at that hard. And you have to say, I've never seen any walk of life where you keep losing and you say, I don't know why, and that it gets fixed. It never happened in my life.

I never saw that happen. I always saw someone say, ooh, it took me three losses or four losses, but now I know what it is. And then there's a drastic re-upheaval and a change of life. I mean, you could be talking about a family now that's breaking up. There's things you've got to do that you don't want to do, okay?

So I've gone through the stats, and I think I've got an answer for you, NBF. So the Bulls, there's a stat on the club rugby hub that's beautiful, which is touches per error. So how many times do I have to touch the ball with my hands before I make an error? And at this point in the season, there's enough data in where this is who you are, right? And so the best hands team out of 40 teams, this is top 14, IRC, Prem, so a big swath of teams, Glasgow.

By the way, number two, Edinburgh. So interesting that in cold weather, rainy, the Scots are really focused on not mowing over or playing through you because maybe they don't have the size. They're really hyper-focused on good hands, not just the good hands catching, but the sympathetic pass. It's like the whole thing goes together. Also, how far you're trying to throw the ball.

Skip some bridges, you know, no, maybe it's about five meter, two meter, three meter. Touches per error, it takes Glasgow 40 touches to make an error. And coaches listening to this and watching this, you would love that. In every team, the under 14 Bs, if you could go 40 times tossing the ball around and you only drop it once in that 40 times, you're going to win. You're going to win every match, right?

At juniors level, the Bulls, 18.5. It takes them 18 touches. They think, oh, 40, 18, 40, 18. That's 40th out of 40.

That's the worst error rate in 40 teams. That includes the cellar dwellers of top 14. That includes the worst teams in the Prem. That includes, you know, all the Welsh teams that are languishing. So that means that if I have that problem in my camp, that my guys have butterfingers, I've got to make an adjustment.

I've got to make an accommodation to reality, right? So do I want to say I want to have a game plan that depends on me getting to five phases and getting it beyond the third receiver and where I end my possessions, you know, with ball in hand? No, hell no. I don't want to do that at all. I don't want to go to five phases because sure as shit, if I'm every 18 touches, that means in my five phases, I'm dropping the ball, spilling the ball and turn over.

And guess what? The bulls are 36th out of 40 at getting to five phases. So there's a failure in the system where your design is designed for speed and elusiveness and evasion, but you're playing more like comfort and blunt force trauma. It doesn't match. So that's the first point we must say.

Then I go to the statistic which says how many times does your possession, your attack set, end with a kick? And actually, when you end a possession with a kick, it means you wanted to kick. You did something because you wanted to do it. And that means you want that stat to be high. The good teams could go phase, phase, phase, kick.

They can find kick space. They can find chip space, which is the new term for that thing just over the midfield. The bulls are 38th. Only two teams end a possession by kick more or less. And that's terrible because that means the bulls are ending their possession, their attack sets, with handling errors.

There's only one. It's inescapable. Either you're scoring a try, which is a way to end your possession, or you're running out, or you're dropping the ball and you're giving the ball up. It's a turnover. So now you have this problem where you have the worst hands, the least likely to go to five phases besides four other teams, and you're ending your possessions with errors instead of like you're trying and failing.

Guess what that does to the defensive coach, the much beleaguered defensive coach. Here's my extraction point. He is starting every defensive set in a worse position than about two other teams out of 40. So don't judge the man too harshly on his planning. Don't judge the players too harshly on their defensive abilities.

If they're always starting on their 30-meter line between the 30 and the 50, and everyone else is starting their position between the other guys 30 and 50, like the Stormers are doing, by the way, they start to defend most of the time right on midfield. I mean, it's really difficult to go all the way through the Stormers, all the way from 50 to... But if you start every time at 30, you're almost in the red zone already. The other part that I want to talk about is how are the Bulls scoring themselves? We're focusing on defensive lapses, and I'm guilty of that too.

But I started looking, what is the way the Bulls are attacking that's putting the defense in so much problem? So we covered one point, which is you're biting off more than you can chew, you're above your pay grade, and so you're getting turned over or you're dropping the ball because you're trying to do something from too deep. So now you've got to defend shortfield. Shortfield defense is really difficult. The other thing is the Bulls are trying to score from deep, and guess what?

There's a reason for it. 30% of the Bulls' tries come from their own half, right? So let that sink in. We start doing things that are wrong in life sometimes because they kind of work. And we go, look, we're sixth out of 40.

We're the sixth best team in the world, minus super rugby, of scoring tries from our own half. Sexy highlights. Amazing. Isn't it cool? Look what we did from here.

Guess what? That's the worst way to score a try. If you rely on that, you're going to suffer. So sure enough, Bulls' tries from their set piece, really bad. With the amount of ball they have, the incredible scrum the Bulls have, the pack they have, they should have good, clean ball from a set piece and be able to score from a set piece.

Stormers, number one. Bulls, 25 out of 40. That's hard. That's a hard way to make a living, to score from kick returns, which the Bulls are the best at, and that's why they score from their own half, instead of set piece. Set piece, you train.

Set piece, you design. Set piece, you have a coach that says, this is what we're going to do when we get the ball here. We kick the ball out. We have a lineup, and we score. What if the way you're scoring is, well, what we're going to do is have a stray kick, and Seb's going to catch it.

He's going to run through them. Billy's going to do a miracle kick. Okay, but what happens when the ball's on the ground? Then they score quickly. So all these errors, I think, feed that.

So I've got more, but that was my first sort of run at answering your question is, yes, players. Yes, coaches. Yes, everything. Yes, the board. Yes, whoever picked this and that, and whoever did this.

But when you try to play a certain way, and it puts you in a bind every time, you're going to have predictable results. And I don't know if I can blame the defensive coach as much as I thought I could, because I see now that the attack, the approach of attack is putting him in a position that no defensive coach would look great in. Not even Sean Edwards, not Jacques Ninaba. They would never want to defend a short field over and over and over. It's interesting what you said about the defense coach, because this is the very same defense coach that took the Bulls to the final last year, last season.

Nothing has changed that much. I'm asking why the Butterfingers all of a sudden? I mean, these are springboks. These are players that are supposed to be at the top of their game, skills-wise, commitment-wise, everything. Somebody said, I think it was our friend Peter Stemmert said, for under the rugby, it's easier to defend South Africa than it is to defend Pretoria.

So I'm asking why, for example, let's start there, the Butterfingers. Why all of a sudden the Butterfingers? It's because we're trying to force a game plan onto these players that they're not ready for or used to or willing to play, and that's why they make all these mistakes. So where does that come from? Exactly.

So I was saying the same thing, but now I've decided, no, it wasn't just one thing that changed a head coach. It was the style that Johan Ackermann brought without sways the brain to do the technical analysis of it so you could more hone it to fit for purpose. So let me give you an example of something that did change, a sea change in one season. How do the Bulls exit? They kick the second least out of 40 teams.

Okay, that's a big change. That's Stormers a year ago, right? So when you put yourself on the back foot, when you try to run the ball out, then the failure rate is going to be higher when you exit by foot, by run, and that is going to put you into this position. Second, when you're doing passes under pressure, you're getting hit while you're trying to offload and swing. We can say butterfingers, but sometimes it's the pass itself that was bad.

So you have two parts of that that make a guy look like bad hands when he's firing it into your left shoulder. When you're running to the right, you've got to come back and get it. Number nine, should be able to look at who he's throwing to and say, oh, it's a forward, it's still a comp, so I'm going to put it right in his belly. When it's to Ville, then I can put it ahead of him because I know he's going to run to it with good hands. The Bulls right now are just firing, firing, firing, and there's no difference between whether I'm giving it to Ludwig or I'm giving it to Papir.

And so this Pell-Mell approach is different because of three things. Number one, Bulls are exiting less by kick than a responsible team should. They're committing rugby malpractice. They're doing the thing where it's always going to put them under pressure because it's going to be a certain number of possessions that get turned over when you try to run exit instead of kick the ball out. You've got Andre Pollard, one of the best line kickers that ever lived in rugby.

Hoof it, get it out. You've got a giant pack that can protect any nine from any kind of charge down, box kick it out. This is a very important thing because it's something that is so back. I mean, it's all the way back. It's Nour Transvaal.

It's like kick the ball. You are living in altitude. You get more purchase from every kick. The second thing is what I sort of proved to you is when you try to go beyond four phases, you get to the fifth phase, you might not have known a person had butterfingers until then. So when I go my first phase, I know what I'm doing exactly.

I've got my first receiver lined up. It's going to be to 10 or 12 or 15 or maybe going to have a Hanukkah coming around the corner. But that's a set move on my second phase. I usually have a set rock and I clean it and everyone knows blue and they know red and they know alpha and they know bait. They know exactly where they're going.

That second phase, not usually a knock on third phase. Sometimes is I'm desperately cleaning. I'm hanging on for dear life. I hope I cleaned the guy, but maybe I didn't. Scrappy ball.

Number nine is getting scuffed as he goes. Oh, he just gets it to steal my comp or they come around the corner and they get that fourth rock. Now that fourth rock is really hard to clean and that's where their problems happen. Or someone gets desperate and says, Papito thinks, okay, now I've got to get it to Seb all the way to the end. I'm going to skip everyone.

Then that one goes out. So it looks like it hasn't changed. But to me, the bulls are playing very different now than under Jake Bull. In Jake Bull, they would end almost every possession with a kick on purpose. Like they would go rock to rock to rock, but then they would kick.

They would never exit by running this much under Jake. Not happening. The other part of this is the restarts. Do you realize the bulls are at the very bottom of claiming a restart? Think about that.

You've got bock props lifting bock locks. How do you not claim a restart? There's no player that's sort of a restart expert. You don't practice when you're seven, eight, nine years old. I'm doing restarts.

That's a coach-driven sector of the game. It is definitely a game plan. You know exactly who you're putting in the air. You study the tendencies. You know where they're going to go.

And you claim that bull and you put it down. You give it to your nine. He boots it out. Or he does a chase. So that's sort of my long answer to your question of what's changed.

I think it's more than just the head coach. It's a philosophical change without the analytical prowess of a sway of the brain to look at a thing and go, hey, head man. Hey, boss. What happened a week ago was this. We've got to change that.

When I hear Johan talking, I don't hear any of that. I hear him literally saying, I don't know what happened. You're talking about speed. The pack being almost as fast or, in some instances, faster than the back line. I mean, that back line is slow.

Set the clock is probably one exception, maybe. It is fast. I mean, there's no doubt about it. But talk to me about that. Why is it so important for that back line to be faster, especially in terms of defense?

Because you said somewhere that the forwards are now, because they're so fast, having to do the work the backs should typically be doing. Yeah, exactly. So rugby is always this crazy sport where you have to plan for success, but then also plan for failure. So I'm attacking, I need to have a sweeper. I need to be able to quickly shift from attack to defense in a way that no other sport really makes you do.

Even in soccer, it's just difficult to analogize it to soccer. It's like rugby is different in the sense that the second the ball's on the ground or you get intercepted or someone drops a kick, you immediately from your brain has to shift from attack to defense. And most teams have a sweeper approach and they have scramble defense. And this was one of the Bulls' main assets for the last four seasons, I think, maybe three, which is even if you broke the line against the Bulls, they were really good at mopping you up. And it's because the system itself covered up for the lack of sheer foot speed by guys like David Creel or Harold Forster or now Andre Pollard or even a big wing like Stravino, is they don't have just the swivel hip speed where you just go, boom, you know, like the stuff that like, you know, Kurt, the Arkansas would have, and maybe used to have, maybe he's lost as well.

So the problem when you look at the backs in the pack, the pack of the Bulls justifies a lot of what Johan thinks. And one of the main things that justifies is the Bulls have amazing ruck speed. And they have the best ruck speed, the most rucks less than three seconds in the world. Somewhere, maybe one or two, it's right there. And I started thinking, I looked at the teams that have slow ones like Barth or Leicester Tigers, I'm like, that's actually better for the Bulls.

The Bulls should slow down their rucks. I think they're just, they're being indoctrinated that a quick ruck is the most important thing. Ambrose, get there and fire it. And then Andre, don't let the ball sit in your ground. Don't kick, just fire it.

And then distribution is one of the worst facets of Pollard's game. So you've recruited this incredibly expensive blue chip guy that's like, you know, a stud, but then you're playing to his worst aspect. Creel and Forster are not really like playmaker type midfielders. So you're relying everything on Vili. And you're doing, and then you're making Vili fire it to people that only have one, like Zeb has speed, yes.

But it's not, I'm not even sure that it's like athletics track speed. And so you're really like playing against other teams that have that. There are teams that can put 10.5 second guys on the field, you know, for a hundred meters. So it just starts to, it looks like a game plan that someone says, it's good in the laboratory.

I like it here. You know, I'm a scientist and now put it on. And I look at the bulls and they go, your best, your best dominant carrier is this season. It was kind of silly, but it's Rudolph, you know, said the clerk is Rudolph. Okay.

That's cool. The clerks there, Forster, Stravino for all his lack of speed, he breaks, tackles, Creel and Visa. That's kind of your big guys. That's your 55% dominant carriers. They get over the game line and smash people and hurt other people.

That's your guys. Seb does it by speed and illusion. The other guys I've mentioned, they're just big and they can, they can mow over you. What about guys that can engage two tacklers? Steenakamp, Ludwig, Visa, Krobalaar.

Who's your top guy to get to a ruck? Krobalaar. So are you getting the picture that a lot of like there's five, six, seven, eight guys that are doing too much of the work. Goumede is a big time. He's a very good ruck attender.

Tacklers per 80 minutes, which will surprise you. Rudolph, number one, 16 per 80 minutes. High tackler, Ludwig, Krobalaar, Visa. Same names keep coming up. And it means that if one of those guys is hurt, if one of those guys has a niggle on the field, but we don't know about it, but he's sort of slowed, the thing just falls to shit because then who's breaking the line absent Hanukkah as Elric Lowe is coming back, you know, and God bless him.

That's a lot to come back from who's getting you over the line, you know? And so I, when you look at the bulls and you say, who's the guy that is hard to tackle in space? So we're not talking about who can knock you back. It's going to come, can do that to you. Ludwig can do that to you.

Visa can do that to you. You're going to hurt for days, but who in space can get you there? So we know Seb de Klerk, we keep talking about Ambrose Papier and Ville La Rue, the oldest guy is the most evasive runner in the bulls. That is not going to work using the Ackermann plan. Ackermann plan, you need to have your dominant carriers and your most busy carriers need to be centers, 12, 13, a wing.

You need to have a live wire 10, more of a Sasha type, um, who ignites, um, when you're, when you're saying to Rudolph, old man, Rudolph, you've got to be my top carrier. Are you going to hit enough rocks? And by the way, you're going to tackle 16 times per 80 minutes on a ratio. What's he got left? You know, that's not long.

Yeah, exactly. You know, uh, okay. I saw articles today saying that they are, you know, big talks going on at Loftus, you know, we've heard the same story over and over again. And once again, we're hearing stories about, we should not be critical. We should be kumbaya and stick by the guys and stand by them.

And I mean, this is the highest points that he scored against the bulls at Loftus in the modern era. Wow. Ever. Don't tell me there's not, there's not a crisis. There's a crisis and we write to call it out and we're going to call it out here.

Let's talk about what you said. Johan Ackermann came in, he had a certain idea. It was a UFC finalist team, basically tuned a little bit here and fine-tuned a little bit there. And Bob's your uncle, like you said, looks brilliant on paper. Now it's not working.

So now they're busy over reset. Fired the coaches, assistant coaches a week or two ago. They've got Neil DeBruyne, you know, who sways the brand. Somebody's good. He's worked with Johan in Japan.

Does a very similar job to what Swayze did. And Swayze also helped a little bit. And this past week, Felix Jones was helping the bulls out as well. I know one session will not, you know, it's not a miracle. He's not a miracle maker or anything like that.

But do you see signs of the bulls actually realizing that something is wrong? But what worries me, like you said, what Johan said, no, but we trained well and we exercised well, the guys were up for it and everything was good and we were ready. And I don't know what's going on here. So with all these changes anyway, are the bulls actually heading in some direction or just drifting towards apocalypse almost? You know, I, I, I fancy Johan Ackermann is probably a really good forwards coach.

I would hire him for that. And I think he can put his head in there. He's, he's, he's very committed. I think he's committed husband, committed man, committed Christian, all those things. Good person, you know?

It's difficult when you're the head guy, because you've got to be really, really confident in yourself. And I smell or I feel body language is not that confident. And that's not surprising. You lose seven in a row, it's going to shake your confidence. But, but I think the agility of a coach that's been around for a long time, like Jake White, John Dobson is they can change things because not only do they have unassailable confidence in what they were doing.

They also have confidence to look at something and say, it's not working. And then their confidence to say, and now we're going to change it to X and I'm not seeing the middle step or the second, the third steps. I don't know. I don't know where we go there. I don't know if he has the mentality to, to shift that because he's always used similar things, which is we'll outwork you.

We'll outspeed you at the Lions. We will out carry you at Gloucester. And we'll use our attack sets so well that we'll, we don't mind if you score some, we're going to score more, but I'm not seeing those sides of that equation here. And I'm not seeing agility to say, Oh, you know, we need to play. Like we should go to three phases and kick every time in the third phase, unless something is on, we never going to run it out of our 22 until we just kick the leather off for maybe three or four matches.

Just see what that looks like. Every exit to kick. Why not? What's the worst thing can happen from a kick charge down. Let's make sure we don't get charged down.

Okay. So no charge down, kick exit. Let's just see what that looks like for fuck's sake. Second thing is I don't think you should preach this idea of rocks less than three seconds. Yeah.

So bulls are third in the world, but what is it getting the bulls in court possessions that they don't want to, they don't know what to do with. Like, so if I have so many rocks that are less than three seconds, I don't even have my guys set. I'm going to talk myself out of doing a box kick, a box kick takes five seconds. So that means they're not box kicking enough. So it don't just look at something and go, wow, we have quick rec ball, like good, clean, good job.

But now what I'm going to give it to Harold Forster again to run into a buzzsaw. And then I'm going to like Stravino, like break the line and he's going to run away from someone. And no, he looks like the rugby has always been the piano pushers and the piano, you know, players, he's more of a pusher. So, and the best carriers are these big, brutal carriers. I like them.

I think the bulls could win the more than they lose in the remaining matches. If they embrace Stinekamp rugby, Visa rugby, Ludwig somebody, what are we talking about? Like, I don't understand. Like, why, why are we trying to be evasive with our oldest player, the very back and then use the nines and a little wing? That's not enough to win in the ERC.

It's not going to work. It's not going to work in champions cup. Another thing I'll say this about attitude is it, you, you, you, you can drink it from your coach. And if you stop believing, it's hard to do violent things that get you hurt when you don't believe in the thing, you know, you're like, uh, okay, I'll do this, but will I really try hard? Dominant tackles.

That's a bull stat where the bulls 27th in the world. Oh, that's like that. I mean, just talk to an OPA, an old one, go talk to someone in the grave and see if they roll over in the grave. Why should you be softer? Sorry.

Then, you know, more than half of the teams. No, you always harder. Like, you know, come on, we don't have to be the smartest guys in the world, but we are hard. You know, you don't run over us. I think when you are, people are too comfortable under the polls talking about what just happened, a trial was scored.

Let's get some water. Let's go back out. And there's no one willing to give, you know, part of their face for a tackle on cover. Then something is wrong in the attitude. You know, Andre Pretorius and I were talking to that WhatsApp group and not to get too explicit, but we kind of agreed.

It didn't seem like the why was there, you know, for a Darby against a Western province stormers. Yes, it's there. Like that's just automatic. What about Bristol bears coming in? I got it.

It doesn't seem like there's enough want to. And so that is coaching. I'm sorry, but you cannot require players to do their own coaching players, play coaches, coach, um, attitude adjustments, storyboarding, motivation, uh, fire up, uh, playing some red arse rugby. That's coaching. That's someone in the locker room telling you, Hey boys today, you know, you're going to determine your own destiny.

Like how to need over talks to the box, you know, like where you can't even believe what he's saying sometimes. It's just like your own story. And that is absent. It's too calm. It's too accepting.

Uh, Ackerman seems like acceptance rugby, you know, except what happens to you. And that's not bulls rugby. No, that's an interesting point. You're raising that as players play and coaches coach. And you mentioned earlier on that as a springboard lock, lifting a springboard, a springboard prop, lifting a springboard lock.

And these players are, you know, they've been in the springboard camp longer than they've been at the bulls in the past 12 months. Let's look at that. I mean, most of the springboards that it's true for. So why don't these players step up and say, listen, um, Mr. Coach, you know, we got rid of the previous group, but they got rid of the previous coach.

Why can't they just say to the sky, listen, we know you're new. We know you're finding your feet. That's what we think is going to happen. What can work and what can't work. Why, why don't they just let it be?

I mean, how can you take this kind of a step down from springboard rugby to bulls rugby, let's call it what it is, and just be accepting of it. I mean, are these guys really giving their all for the bulls or are they only playing for the springboards now? That's such a good question, right? We'd have to be embedded like I was with the stormers to get a feel for that. I feel like the players are confused.

I feel like for Broden Felix, but Felix cannot come in and say, we're going to play a different game plan. I think he would probably have to sublimate Felixology to Ackermann plan. I don't know. That would be weird if they came in and in one week, he tried to change the way they played on exit and five plus rocks. So probably Felix, if we gave Felix truth serum right now, he'd probably say, yeah, I don't fucking know, man.

I don't know if you can untwist that in a week. I think probably skills, you can add a bit to there. I mean, on a line out or a scrum, you can always add. If Don Heumann was to spend a fortnight with the stormers, it's always going to help. But on shape of play and what you want to do with the ball when you have a go ball, when you have green lights, that's very specific to the head coach and to the attack coach.

So now I'm starting to change my mind that the problems on defense are stemming from the attack and the attack is too loose and it's providing opportunities to the opposing team that you dream of. It's almost like, you're going to give me the ball there? Oh, thank you. If I get the ball, you didn't kick, you could have kicked, but you gave me the ball the other way in that position, let's say eight or nine times a game, really good attack teams like Bristol. They're a very good attacking team, but they're going to score.

It's like, wow, I cannot believe you gave me the ball there. So I think we have to go back to the drawing board. I don't know. You could bring in all the buck coaches. You could bring in the last year, I don't know if it would change anything because you have to be able to play exit ball, percentage ball.

I always thought the rugby from Pretoria area was a very pragmatic style. And I think you have to, I think you have to fit the DNA of the area and you have to fit the philosophy of the area. I cannot ask boys that played a certain way for 20 years and suddenly change around in one season. A hundred years. No, you're right.

If I can put it in a nutshell that you've got to rock in the bulls half, very quick rock speed that we get the ball, the bulls get the ball quicker than they're supposed to. Then they start attacking, but the tech's not working out. Then something happens. They spill the ball inevitably with an 18 handling, 18 handles, whatever I call that. So the ball is pulled and then the defensive line is not sitting in the new position scores.

That's what it means. That's what you're saying. Yeah. And also think about what it means when I get quick correct ball and I fire it out. You know, 10 meter boss, four meter boss, and then Creel or Forster is trying to go into the next ruck.

Do I want Krobala, Gomere, Visa to get from ruck one to ruck two? How, where, when? So I've made ruck three and four almost impossible to win. And I'll throw another thing at you. The bulls are not good at pilfer.

They're not jack. Their jackal rate's very low absent Hanukkah, um, who plays a bit like a six, eight, you know? So there's no, you can play this way, this high risk, high reward, but then you better have a pilfer on the, on the field. You better have, you know, a Paul de Villiers, 100 or so straight up old school fetcher. And I just, so I think you're putting a lot on your defense and then it's easy for the attack to look at the defense and go, look, what did you do?

You let him so many tries. That's not fair. They they've got to put the defense in a better position. Um, these are fixable things. Um, like you, like you said in the opening, who was this bulls team a year ago?

They, when they went to play Linster, it was almost like even odds. I mean, yes, Linster was favored, but it wasn't like no one was thinking they'd roll over them. So the, the seeds, the potential for a powerhouse was there. Um, you, you cannot at some point ignore the fact that the shape of the play, that the style of the rugby that's being implemented and talked about on Thursdays and Fridays and Mondays and Tuesdays is just, it's some kind of cock. It's not, but it's wrong.

Thank you for slipping that word in there. I mean, so I'll, I'll bring it back to the Bible. Look, there's a great parable that Jesus talks about where he does an incredibly difficult analogy. And he says, there was a master who left, you know, um, he left for a while and he gave his servants, he gave one, one talent. I want to get one, three, one, five, something like that.

Okay. And the one with the one said, Oh, I just buried it under the ground. Here it is safe. One year later, I'm like, I was really upset, throw him out here, put him in jail. And the one who had three, you know, it doubled it, you know, put some investments.

The other one went crazy and, you know, got a big reward and the parable says that that was better, you know? And so I think it's interesting because when I hear these press conferences where you say, I don't know, uh, well, I don't know. I don't know why you lost. Um, then you double down and you keep doing the same thing as if you're like, I don't want to do anything too radical. I mean, something has to change really quickly because I read so many people who said, I've been a bull supporter for 40 years.

I've been a bull supporter for 37 years. I've been a bull supporter since I was a little lighty. I will never, my blood, my blood is light blue and I'm done and I'm finished. And this is nothing. I don't like it.

Finishing cloth. I don't like it. I don't want to support this. Um, she's, I want to see a little more, uh, reality based reaction to losses that are this terrible. Um, much like you saw Rossi at Ellis park where he said, yeah.

And I think there was unequivocal that he said that was not good enough and he knew why he would, and he would fix it and look what he did. It's fake. It got fixed. Yeah, exactly. Uh, I didn't, I don't see any evidence of this current regime being able to look at a thing, understand why you lost.

You put the ball in play way too much time for your big forwards and your best carriers are not the kind of people who can evade tackle. They can run through a team and you better put the ball up ahead of them and find some kick space, some chip space. There's something, Andre Pollard is one of the best in the world that he's not one of the best in the world at doing dummies and behind the, you know, none of that stuff. Yeah. It's not going to work.

That's that's such a territory. That's not what it's designed for. I agree with you. Hey, um, we started something else, uh, recently, a little website, megaphonerappi.com, and we're going to feature some of your writing there as well.

People have often asked, where can I read some of your writing? And so we're going to be publishing them. And we're going to start with a couple of excerpts from your old writing, you know, 2015 final, semi-final that you always refer to. The whole buildup today, I was reading it this afternoon, the jog from Trafalgar Square and Nelson, and you had everybody in there. I'm looking forward to publishing that one.

So what are we going to be doing in future on that website? We'll be publishing the video. This one we're doing now. We're obviously doing the audio as well, which is Spotify and Apple. And then we also have an article.

So for some people that, you know, lay in bed late at night and don't want to wake your wife, you can read it, what we were talking about. And it's not just a transcript. It's a proper article. So go visit our website megaphonerappi.com and let us know what you think.

We're still building on it because of the internet problems. I haven't finished it properly, but it's up and it's running. Let's, let's give it a shot. Did you have a look? Yeah, I did.

Uh, you're building an empire. Um, this is incredible. No, I think it's interesting because, you know, we'll, we'll drop more and more stuff in there as I think about it, you know, playing with stats. Oh, Hugh Griffin's waited this too, you know, just exploring different ways to think about numbers. Um, you know, maybe the Harry index will make an opinion of that.

I was thinking about putting, giving that index his own page because often people say, what are you talking about? Then I'm going to refer them to look at that page. There's the latest index. There's your thinking about why you're saying what's going on in that index. I think that's maybe not a bad thing to do.

Anyway, that was awesome. Thank you so much. And thank you for that. Almost forensic analysis. I think we needed that.

Get the hype out of it, emotion out of it. Somebody took me on for calling you Griffin an outsider the other day, and I wasn't meaning it was an outsider. I mean, he's not emotionally as involved as I am. I am, for example, and you're similar to you. You're not a pool supporter.

49%, 48 to 49% or 51%. Like you said the other day. So thanks for that. I think that we needed that. Appreciate it.

Cheers.

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