The Kicking Spectrum: Rassie's Springboks vs Rennie's All Blacks | Lekker Rugby Pod

This is the Lekker Rugby Pod, only on Megaphone Rugby. The Lekker Rugby Pod returns Harry, I've built enough shells to last an army, I've cleaned up stuff, I've been a handyman as much as possible as we can. I'm back in Pretoria, so time for the Lekker Rugby Pod again, thank you, welcome back. Yeah, how's it? That can be as exhausting as work.

It can make an oomint to an oomint. So speaking of, I was watching The Box this weekend and I started thinking of succession and planning. And, you know, I think there's a certain part of your life. Maybe you're in it and I think I'm in it where I think of legacy. What am I leaving behind?

And did I make things better? Did I keep my promises? And I think, you know, you look at The Box now, they're really thinking of grooming varieties and different generations. And, you know, I just I didn't foresee this. I didn't foresee this sort of level of, you know, building things beyond my lifetime kind of thing that Rossi is doing.

So I think it's wonderful. That's my main thing. Second thing is I think it's very interesting the kind of feedback we're getting on the channel. And everyone's obviously got their own tastes. But I'm really enjoying the diversity of opinion and view.

And I think it's funny when people get upset about an opinion site having opinions. i'm okay with all opinions i actually think they're i mean as long as no one's getting like personally nasty but uh it's interesting uh no i what what did you think just you know once your heart settled down and you knew that was in the bag what did you think about that game the funny thing for me is when we when i watch the game i'm actually sort of playing director for the afrikaans commentary we're doing so i've got two earphones the left ear is afrikaans guy speaking in my ear and the right earphone is at Supersport commentary and I'm doing a live thing as we're talking. So I actually miss a lot of the game to be honest. What I do know and what I did notice and we're going to talk about that is I call it swing of momentum swings and you say we have to differentiate between mental swings and actual physical swings which we'll talk about. I'll tell you what my heart was in my mouth and when they started coming back towards the end I thought where's the altitude now?

I mean aren't these guys supposed to be tired? They just flew back from Argentina and it's not supposed to be this and that above sea level. You know that's one thing about the URC I would think that Loftus and Alice Park holds no fear anymore. These guys now have to play there. Franco obviously was put in many ears, I suppose.

That's what I saw. I just thought, oh, my word is just going to get away from us when they started coming back again. They just didn't die. That's my driving impression. The essence of the Scottish national team is the Glasgow club team.

Obviously, the Glasgow club team plays at Loftus. I'm not saying that familiarity breeds contempt. when I'm saying familiarity breeds familiarity. And so they're not going in thinking, ooh. I mean, there are players that come from Australia.

They might play at Loftus twice in their whole career. And it's scary. I remember seeing Tom Hooper at his first game in Loftus live. And I watched the young man and thought, this guy's literally physically scared and alone and alienated. He doesn't know where he is.

It's all foreign. There's nothing foreign to the contingent of Glasgow Warriors who play for, you know, put a purple shirt on. I mean, it's like, okay, it's Loftus. Number two, the frilly fit. I mean, if you look at Franco's regimen of training that he told us about, this is specifically what they're designed to do.

But it's still a losing game, okay? So Scotland lost, and you would be confused, as often is the case, when brave, thrilling Scotland losers, did they actually win? No, they lost. They lost the game, lost it really well. They lost it big, and they got thumped by a BC team with a couple of A players.

you would that's not the team that's not the buck team so it's very important to think about that is there would there have ever been a better shot for scotland with generational players and a deeply embedded coach uh great grand plan incredibly fit players no fear they should have done better okay so that's that's the first thing i've heard too much of the wonderfulness of scotland great well done well played but you got hammered um and so i think that's important number two i'm with you i understand what it means when you do shifts and flows there's other sports out there that have lived longer in the regimen that rugby has now created artificially engineered which is the contest will be deeply contested throughout and there's going to be ebbs and flows and and incredible rallies and streaks and it's going to be the the team that puts together the most during their rally during their purple patch blitzes um gallops and then it feels we convince ourselves because we want to be convinced that we're not alone in the universe and there's a plan i'm going to get there's momentum is behind us mass times velocity like go on fenter you know resurrecting single-handedly jan wilkins in the the new wrestling move where i just run with my guy towards the trial. I thought it was like a wind up little, here's my lock, here we go. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So that's momentum, okay? And it's very difficult to stop Kubrick's visa as a flying, you know, flying juggernaut, you know, held by Jan Wilkins, bless his soul, the late Jan Wilkins, who I love so much.

Momentum there is where games get out of hands. And there was a time when rugby was pretty much a certain type of score, was a shape, and it wasn't the good old days by the way it was muddy old ball days 55 scrums and so 13 7 you know 4 6 3 0 and then it got to another phase where it was 28 13 26 2012 uh jacques ninabar comes in in the sort of last part of the third phase the era of rugby where he can shut down and the shutdown is interesting because it creates a margin that i don't think we're going to see the likes of again, not for the foreseeable future. Rugby has literally said we don't want 13-11 finals anymore. We don't want that. We want more like the quarterfinal.

And in the quarterfinal, which is a very important shaping factor, the French overplayed using traditional methods to score and they just overplayed themselves. Ask any luck, what's the worst thing, hardest thing in rugby? It's cleaning rucks when your guys, your game drivers, your pretty boys keep saying ruck one, rock two, rock three, phase 14. Oh, you are throwing up in your mouth. You saw Paul DeVille is just slobbering at one point.

That's a kid who doesn't know stop, so he's going to keep going. That's not really the way you have to do it to score anymore. If you can find kick space, aerial space, if you can create a bigger field, because the field is big up here too for Ethan Hooker, for Roman Intimac, for your Flyers at the Sogbe, people who can really go up and get it. For all his faults, Afalel de Fassi. So the field got bigger.

The field of play got bigger. Secondly, the scraps win matches now more than scrums. Scrums are great, especially in a club. Or if you have someone with a weak scrum like Ireland, you can just mooter them. And that's very reliable.

That's very reliable, right? But not in a game where you have a tricky team like Scotland that can say, I can get around that. I don't depend on my scrum. So I can get my way around that. I can early engage.

I can play games. So you have to be able to win scraps and you have to be able to play quickly and score quickly in bursts. So it's not a terrible thing to go up 14-0 and then consider try. Ah, the end of the world. No, you're not going to keep Scotland to seven.

It's not going to happen. It's not like in the pool game in Marseille where you could shut down Finn Russell. Finn Russell learned from the shutdown. So France learned we overplayed. have to play a different way a la the bordeaux way the steam roller the frenetic pinball type rugby look at the number of rucks that south africa forms in a game nowadays 70 65 go across to indian ocean across the tasman to new zealand 150 140 rucks ireland's also building 130 rucks so those are two very distinct types of play when you think of how different 140 rucks are on your body and on your subs and on your card liability your risk factor how you tackle versus you know 65 70.

and look at the tries that france and and the box are scoring some of them are launched from the dungeon you know the middle third of the field but on your side of of off or like the score where jesse creel scores standing up untouched it's uh andre finding almost football soccer style a ball through that that just jumps up for him and if you start thinking that's lucky you know watch bordeaux they do that every saturday so and this this requires no rocks uh andre flinging it to the side in wellington uh after sears carry that's no rock that's no ruck rugby um even the one that that Evan Rourke scores yesterday, it was a lot of no-ruck before that. And so the box just breezed in, you know, in that singular event, there was momentum because who could stop Kourbis Vise galloping? But in the end, you still had to do something and get there. And it's much easier to get there when their pillar and their post are nowhere to be found. And I know you're going to get into that with me is what happened.

Yes, it's true. Scotland can score, but we shouldn't have let them score that much. And I agree with that. But all I'm saying is we have to make our minds different to see scores differently because our game has a different average score now. It just does.

Unless someone does something different before the World Cup, this is what the World Cup is going to look more like. It's going to have 50, 20. I mean, look at, you know, even the scores between New Zealand and Italy. Teams like that where you think there would be 57-3 or 65-0. No, no longer.

it's going to be both sides score three five four six tries we always talk about you know 4d chess we talked about it a little while ago remember about russi and when you started painting this picture of you know you've got the field and actually above it in the air there's another field you know new levels of you know playing a game and then we're talking about the spectrum thing that you sent me and i thought it was so interesting you know where africa's on the one end of the spectrum playing both these levels let's call it that and new zealand is on the other end playing the old traditional russler up and you just mentioned that 70 rocks versus 150 rocks talk to me about that spectrum because this is africa's the one extreme new zealand's the other extreme and where does everybody else fit and why what's the thinking behind it i know you explained it a little bit but i'm just want to get more and i want to zoom out a little bit then understand it better primary mindset would be kick is failure so if you grew up around the nfl gridiron there's a series of downs and then when you fail to get a first down you kick because you don't want to lose possession and hand over rugby league. I'm not sure exactly how many phases. I think it's five and then you have to kick. So kicking is always conceived of as a little boy, as a teenager in schools, as a light tea, as failure. Everyone's screaming at you.

Your mom's upset. She's disappointed in you. Rugby is not that way. If you can kick earlier in the cycle, if you can end your possessions with a kick, but on purpose, maybe in the first or second phase, and then do kick to kick because what you're trying to do is find territory, awkward territory. And so there's a huge spectral difference between the New Zealand thought pattern, which Australia slavishly follows to their demise because they cannot do it.

They're not able to do what New Zealand does, except for a couple of outliers. So Joe Schmidt's last nine of the last 10 matches. New Zealand can do old school rugby by not using the kick early, by looking at the kick as a failure, worshipping and adulating, enshrining the idea of hands, ball in hand rugby. Only phase rugby is rugby. We're playing lots of rugby, they say.

They don't use that to describe kicks that are attacking. So the way into this, the entree into understanding of the spectrum, I think is to understand the kick attack. And Tony Brown brought something to the box in finding space all the time. He's a scanner. He's a guy that loves to play rugby football.

and so alone among all the nations with a little bit of a trend of the french sort of following us and copying us is south africa uses the attack kick and i was so struck with the difference not just uh in november of last year but now right now in rounds one and round two in the first round and i'll just define some terms here so there's total kicks from hand so there's a there's a definition there where someone is kicking a ball from the hand not from a tee and not at poles and everyone else was 17 18 22 16 15 so i forget 30 wow that's crazy that's a strange thing let me check and see what's inside that so there's a definition of an attacking kick a kick meant to be like you want to kick nothing in your heart says nah now i got a kick i'm under pressure it's not an exit kick it's not a you're deep in your you know behind your try line you do set one ruck nine goes to ten and he boots it as far as he can that's not an attacking kick even if it turns into a 50-22 by luck it's not an attacking kick because it wasn't in your heart so attacking kicks in the first round for the box 24 attacking kicks jeez just from the total number 24 everyone else is 5 New Zealand 8 Australia you know very low uh what was what was ireland there was something 11. i mean those are numbers that are kind of constant and then 24. so that means not all the attacking kicks come off but not all the attacking phases come off so just because it doesn't you cannot terminate in a try from a bunch of phases doesn't mean you have to terminate in a try from a kick for a kick to be good Tony Brown's building enough attacking kicks 24, 13 in round 2 that from that not all contestable kicks are attacking but all attacking kicks are contestable but all contestable kicks are attacking so when you contest the ball you're by definition saying I think I can regain it so look at the ratio of Slavica 30 kicks in general 24 of them attacking That phenomenal That might be the most ever percentage. 20 of the 24 contestable, and you get seven back. Ah, but Wales got five of six.

I don't care. Seven regained kicks will win you a lot of matches comfortably. it's devastating in this fractured with every player a bit quicker, every prop's quicker now on average every lock's quicker, they're athletic so anyone can finish it compare that, New Zealand down that same list 17 total kicks, 5, only 5 attacking, 3 confessable 1 regained but Harry, that's an outlier I went to round 2 it's the same proportionality New Zealand, 16 total kicks seven attacking, four contestable. They got all four back, which tells me the All Blacks should do a lot more contestables. So when you look at these teams, the way they're set up, the one team that stood out to me, they were all the same.

Like Australia is just doubling down. They got two regain kicks in losing to France, just got walloped. Argentina, sort of the same, you know, 15 attacking, nine contestable, three regained. The one team that I saw Andy Farrell learning is he's adding to that. From round to round, you're going to see eight, nine, ten contested.

My prediction is in round three against the All Blacks, Ireland will put up 15 contestables. And they will make New Zealand prove. What the Bucs have tried to make New Zealand prove is that you understand the aerials. And we say they don't. Dave Rennie appears to be saying it doesn't matter.

I will starve you of possession. I will keep the ball so much that when the time comes that you do a contestable, it won't matter because I will have scored on my possessions. That was the theory that Scotland came in using. So it's all black light. They just came in and said, we're going to build.

Scotland had so much possession yesterday. I mean, they literally starved the box of ball. They had territory. I think they forced the box into trying to make 233 tackles. and made about 190.

So I understand the theory, but look at the scoreboard in the end, and it could have actually been another seven at the end if we really, really applied ourselves. So it felt to me a lot like England, which is, yeah, you're not ready for this new style of rugby, and you're just playing at it. You're a dilettante. England, to me, looks like they're going to try to follow the French in the box. Scotland and Ireland are still in the Kiwi camp.

that's romantic, that's fun, that makes me happy, that fills up bums and seats, but I think it still loses in the end. Yeah, I actually watched a video yesterday about the 2000 years of philosophy, broken down into two minutes, and it was so interesting, starting with Plato and Socrates, and ended up with, you know, Nietzsche and everything else, you just, you know, explained to me these two philosophies, you know, on a sliding scale as well, and I think you touched right to the end but I mean philosophy is one thing and a theory is another it's one thing but what's what do you think is the actual right way to go forward Russia actually complimented the world rugby on the new rules changes none of the sarcastic or what you know some scrums are less important everything else so what are you reading to this which one of these philosophies do you think is actually the right one going going forward well I mean the big nations that have factories of rugby, so the southwest of France, the posh schools in England, the whole of South Africa and the centers of New Zealand, it doesn't really matter because you can play any style you want. You have enough type of body, a type of quick twitch, quick twitch, slow twitch, power, size, physique, that whatever you intend to do, you can do it. The problem is it takes the cycle is like 10 years. I mean, you have to be planning now with your under-14s and under-12s and you have to ingrain.

Peter Stefft-Toy keeps talking about the system. Trust the system. You can plug into the system. The truth is, and he's right, but the truth is, as you saw yesterday, when you have only 58 caps in the pack besides Peter Stefft-Toy to finish the game, people are still learning their craft. So it's going to look a bit ragged.

And I agree, I'm saying that's why you have to do it. So if you are Rossi and you are unchallenged, there's no one nipping at your heels, there's no one banging for your blood, you have proven yourself. And to some extent, that's true of Farrell with limited resources, you have more opportunity to build, to pick teams that are experimental to do what you're trying to do, build the system. But so I think for South Africa, because of innate and probably for the foreseeable future advantages in speed and in quickness, side-to-side quickness in the backs. And then some advantages, not as much as 50 years ago, in pure power and ballast and displacement.

like just an actual like you just see Jan Hendrick Vessels having sat right behind him in Dublin just a block of a man but still mobile I think that's an advantage so why wouldn't you want to play a more percussive type of rugby where I run through you for a while and then I split you and then I bounce the ball fine grass and then I have scatterbacks leckerbacks scooting around to me that's it also the frenetic all court game where you're really comfortable with them scoring in a way. You go, oh, you want to score? Okay, then let's keep scoring. It's that kind of day. We're going to get 50.

We're going to get 45. What are you going to get? You're going to feel really proud of yourself to get 32. And you're going to lose by a lot. You know, I said by 16, it was 14 in the end.

We're getting ourselves kind of worked up sometimes of the Scottish fight back. That was always going to happen because they opened the field. The Bucs opened the field, and they had 58 caps in the pack besides Peter Stiftettoy. So it's just the nature of the beast. If you want to experiment, fine.

Ireland, you know, cannot. They start pretty much the top team, you know, game after game after game. And look what happens in the World Cup is there's no way, you know, when Sexton's injured, he stays on in the quarterfinal against New Zealand because there's no one else to go to. No one's been groomed. So I think it's very important to recognize that.

The right style for a team like Australia, that's actually more interesting to me. what should they do you know yeah and i think what they should not do is copy new zealand first of all they're wedded to them in such a way that they have to play them a lot they play them more than anyone else gets to play the all blacks which is a horrible way to have a winning record um so i think they need points of difference and i think it's probably mobility um i don't think it's like powering through the all blacks um but i think it needs to be a different mobility and my gut tells me that the kick abilities of aussie rules of league of just innate footballing skills of australians and you know more surfer swimmer bodies uh trickery like cricketers they have there's something in there bank robbers like ned kelly their hero i think that's got to be the way it is by just saying i'm going to try to do what you do exactly but better i just don't think that's going to work so i think within each rivalry within the six nations you're picking your poison so to answer your question i think france probably has it about right you know they're just doing things really kind of skeleton it's crazy it doesn't look it looks unplanned and sometimes you go how did you draw that up you know when you have two when you have an intamac and jalibert on the field with loucouple and the strings and le garic it looks chaotic um and that's even without louis bill beery there so i think they've got about it right i think it's england that is just coming stubbornly back to the fold and saying we are really just going to be a power and a kicking team with uh you know proper athletes on the wings i think that's what they have to do australia is nowhere because they have no 10. since stephen lockham have not had a consistent fly off that drives them and um it's unclear to me if ireland has a succession plan like oppa russie um a lot now he's getting so old in the game that he's thinking he's thinking on so many levels now that it's almost like someone thinking about the next century you know it's bizarre how far ahead he's thinking so interesting you know to me just gut feeling is you know if you do 150 rocks you're going to be dead on your feet you know the bench come on and maybe not save you but i mean if you kick more and have less impacts and less rocks like you said rock speed doesn't matter if you don't have a rug to start with and um you know the physical toll it takes on you at the end of the day who's going to be left standing the team who's got fewer physical we had fewer physical demands put on them yeah true and it's so our game is so funny you know in some ways because you're always a both my attack shape is going to affect my defensive capabilities my defense shape is going to affect my counter attacking abilities um you know in football watching the world cup they have these sort of setups these four two three one whatever and it strikes me that the teams that are relying on low box uh defense camp down and then boom counter attack it's all resting in the quality of that long ball that long ball has to work so for holland or someone else to latch onto it and score i think russi recognized that the box was sort of stuck in that and yes we can score a a lot of tries and yes 2007 lots of tries but it was still a bit slow poison grind the grind is no longer there or maybe it's not even necessary anymore maybe that's what he he was able to brilliantly with felix jerry stick don the guys go what's a way for us to shape ourselves differently so this kicking shape is one clue which is we want to play in the air we want to play diagonals we want to create plays that are more like a tom brady out in the nfl with sasha able to kick a ball so many different ways mani able to kick it both feet so different ways with his eyes shut and then hondre sort of a bruising up the gut channel runner um a little bit like flint smith now as well and jalibert they take the ball and they run through you as from 10. i think what that does is it creates shape everywhere and it makes every man an attacker everyone a danger that's that's the tony brown vision i think alone new zealand is bucking the trend and saying no we can just do it the old way you know with with an excellent nine and a really quick 10 and uh you know and and just phase phase phase phase phase and beat you so i think the problem for new zealand also is it is just really not able to handle um you know france at their best i think is going to be a handful the handful for them in 2027 and i think for already new uh New Zealand is losing South Africa at a rate of about 75% now, just routinely year after year after year. I saw some problems, you know, and we can get into that about the box that I think does let teams in too much.

But I'll just say I think we have to absorb that the new reality is the average score has gone up about 30% on both sides. And so it's the moments that will turn the tide. And the tide is fickle. It's not really a strong tsunami momentum anymore. It's more like, you know, every 10 minutes, the thing shifts.

And it can shift on the weirdest things, like Kyle Stane not gathering that cross kick, that perfect cross kick. Or Grant Williams, the smallest man on the field, defeating a, you know, 1,000 kilogram mole. Like, how did he do that? And then from that, the weird little chip wedge kick, the pitching wedge by Kwan Horn, it looked like it was a miscue, but the Ruan got it and shot up. Yes.

Like Philip Eccleston. Thin lie. It almost went backward. It was going to go over the triline and come back to a boomerang. Nortia takes it.

He runs. He gallops. He kicks through. Then on the exit, you have Ethan Hooker scooping up and then feeding Paul De Villiers, of all things who grabbers attacking kick that's part of the that's part of the 13 attacking kicks he kicks through it doesn't come off but it's like oh look at that you had a blind you had an open side flanker in space two-handed on the ball very comfortable paul de villiers grubbering through for gaza stream at the wing willemsa almost gets that and it would have been in one of the tries the season and it showed you that we're not really looking at scotland as the inventive cool attacking finn russell mercurier was wizards we can do stuff you know we're doing just as much stuff but better you know that try that even roos finished off was one of the best tries movements i've seen towards a try in ages because it had everything it had you know it had two meter locks galloping it had incredible skills by forwards um they had communication did you see how willemsa was instructing paul on where to go and using willemsa as well as a pivot i mean to me was beautiful and i think the point there is um they are embracing the chaos they are embracing the gray area as bernard jackman calls it which is this and i know attacking teams uh coaches love to go let's just get into the corner and we build a starter play like joe schmidt you know but they love that kind of stuff but that's not if you look at the real stats first phase tries glasgow wins in the urc um it's a plan it's from set piece but uh they're not they're not winning you know and it's it's more and more a game of can you score from anywhere anytime and can you You use less rocks to do it. Yeah, so that's the big picture.

I'm happy to talk about what I saw in the actual game, though. Yeah, let's talk about that. You mentioned earlier, and I picked up on it, and I wanted to ask you. You said the 58-gap springbok side left on the field opened up. Did they open up or were they opened up?

You know there a difference So there technical fallacies that Jerry Flannery will sit down with the boys and he take them and he do it in a group and then he do it one by one And he apparently is someone who really knows how to not embarrass people and treat them with respect so they can listen. But, you know, basically in what we'll call phase two and beyond, there's a pillar defender and this this term pillar gets um confused a lot with the post defender so inside many teams in africa you use more of a guard and bodyguard and you say it you actually you actually shout it you've seen people raise their hands right around the ruck a lot uh that's also a body signal of i'm pillar and pillar is going to be your closest man to the rock on the open side So if you have a tight blindside, you might not have anyone standing there. You're going to leave that to the wing in the nine or you're going to leave that to the eight to peel off. But on the big side where people are going to try to pick and go or they're going to try to have someone offer themselves to the nine and bash big eight carrier right up the gut. Your pillar defender is keeping everyone honest.

He's the guy saying, I'm almost touching the rock. I'm a big boy. You're not going to run through me. I'm Franz Malherber. and Vilkolo tried to run through me.

I'm the pillar. I am the pillar of the Acropolis. Next to you, the very next person is going to be the post or the bodyguard. That person also raises her hand second and yells something, but it's all coded. It really could be.

This is not a joke. When Bongi talked about Tom Curry, there is a way that that's what they're yelling. You know, he can't, daddy can't. You know, it could actually be a pebin, vit, can't. because they could have a color code.

And that matters because it's going to relate to the next thing I'm going to say, which is the pillar and the post, the guard and the bodyguard, the near and the far, they have to fold or slide. Because remember, the next time you tackle, that rock just moved more into the open side, creating a bigger blind side until nightmare, you're against the all blacks of the island and the rock is very much in the middle of the field. And that's scary. Now, you got two pillars, two posts, everyone's shouting, and it's not clear who slid and who folded. Do you hold, do you fold?

So am I pillar here, get up, pillar again, get up, pillar again, or do I tackle and then the ruck moved, and then I got to go all the way around the ruck onside and get to the next one, or did I become the post, the next defender? Now, what I've just said sounds complicated enough if you weren't throwing up in your mouth from being tired at altitude, that you can see why little tiny things that went wrong on the first phase or second phase or third phase would create the potential for the tip pass right through the pillar and the post. Now, those two guys are supposed to be able to touch each other if they just kind of move a bit. You know, if I just take one step, I should be able to hold hands, the pillar and the post. That was not happening.

So you saw the weird sight of large forwards running free up the middle. Whatever statistics were created later from that, those were exponential, those were follow-on. They almost don't matter. You could miss five tackles or four or five tackles once someone's run right up the gut, and then they just start offloading. So I think at source, they would they would buckland would say okay we didn't get that right and so that does matter that only 58 forward caps just forward caps i'm talking about on the field because it's the forwards who are the pillar in the post and and it's very difficult for peter steph to toy to do everything chase blitz shoot talk direct and i think so that's why he missed so many tackles peter steph missed like eight tackles because he was trying to mop up and jesse creel another guy missed a lot of tackles because he was trying to cover the holes that fussy left and you know when you come back into the game and you haven't been doing it very much or you have a guy like kwan horn uh playing at 10 and then you have 12 um it's very difficult to organize your backline defense but i think it's also deceivingly difficult for forwards to stay low right because if i'm a pillar defender i've really got to stay low i've almost got my hand on the ground and what i want to do is to say to you you will not get under me you will not get through me and by god you might even not get around me that's difficult because i'm not going to be the quickest guy comes is super important it's incredibly loud it's incredibly chaotic and then spacing so the low and the comms and the spacing all go out the window when you're tired confused chaotic even great players that i think will be great players like zach porthen um gonna miss some tackles gonna miss some assignments that's what they call it you missed your assignment jerry flannery would say you missed five assignments in the dungeon what does that mean well we don't want to get stuck in the middle third because that's going to be penalty against us kick to the corner or three and we don't want to get stuck there also because it's difficult to get momentum see in in the moment i'm just talking about attack now there is momentum because it's physics but i want to slingshot my rucks and so that's why we kick early is because we don't want to get into the point where we're just saying, I wonder who's ready to run.

Ooh, it's Evan again. Ooh, but he just ran. You know, is he the best? You know, is it best to go to Kouba's visa three times in a row? No.

Every tackle injures you pretty much. So you've got to have like this mind going. And I think Papir had a wonderful game in some ways, but he also didn't read the game as well as Grant Williams. So I thought when Grant Williams came on, it was different. But then immediately you have Quan Horn at 10, and then you have a problem of who's the game driver.

I thought Fassi had a very poor game positionally. I'm not trying to anger the church of Fassi. I'm just calling it as I see it. And there also, I thought Vilco struggled in the scrums. And then, of course, Benjes Nixon, one of my favorite players in the world, as everyone knows, got it just wrong.

With some help from Sioni Tupolotu. Watch the tape again. it's interesting as he only just guides him into the head of his fella um and then uh early on got smashed in in in context i don't want to undersell scotland they were doing some really good things in scrum they were doing some really good things themselves on kick to put fasi in the wrong place and finn literally looked at fasi and said i can make you go where i want you to go you know know at his best finn is an incredible choreographer um but i thought also the bomb squad with all its inexperience when you brought on tux zach jan hendrick ben jason elrich uh and grant the speed of the box just i'm talking about the the underlying median speed the mean got too much for the scots to handle yeah for a bit then they came back again but anyway That's what I mean by no momentum. It doesn't stick. You just sit.

You sit for one second and then you're under your posts and you're drinking water and there's a physio yelling at you but you're throwing up because this new style of game, Envia, is incredibly demanding on the body. Yeah, we saw that. I wanted to ask you, you talk about that gap between the forwards actually came through that gap. Did Scotland identify that beforehand? Or do you think it just opened up on the day?

Because it felt a bit premeditated to me, like they were expecting it to happen, and then it did happen. What do you think went wrong, actually? Why didn't it work that well? That's such a good question. I think it's a combination of scouting and an adjustment at oranges.

Because I saw it more post-oranges than before. It also can come from when you have a yellow card. It's almost exactly what you do, because Ben Jason Dixon would often be the bodyguard. That's actually where he was playing very well. And you're also going to do a lot of barging at the ruck when it's the other way around.

So that's intelligent. I think that's sort of conventional wisdom almost. You go down one forward, then run through the forwards. Don't immediately go wide where your advantage is negated. but I think there probably also was some in-game analytics because they're very good at that.

That's something that Gregor is very good at, is watching a game and they tend to finish strong. They're very good at that. There was always going to be a wave. I just think it's like watching the NBA. The scores used to be 90 to 88.

Now they're 130 to 125 and no one bats an eyelid, which means that when the other team goes up and it's a 14-point lead in the third quarter, no one cares. It's nothing. It's not safe. I think what rugby wanted to do was make leads less safe, for us not to be so appalled and surprised that someone could reel someone back from 14 down, because that's too boring if too many games are loafers and they are put to bed by 60 minutes. This is not good for rugby.

we're trying to get people to the stands we can use LED lights we can use your favorite DJ we can have dancing girls from Transylvania whatever but in the end the game itself has to be tight and scary but also we hear that the people coming to the Coliseum who want to see gladiators play they want to also see a lot of action and scores and I think that's been accomplished by one thing more than anything else and it's so hilarious that it wasn't even a rules change. It was just, we don't want you to guard the catcher on a kick. And that immediately opened up everything. Because now, if I have no purpose standing there, and I might get pinged for it, coaches told you, like Norton and Laker, get out of there. I don't want you there at all.

So it cleared out. Which then counter-attacking coaches like Tony Brown said, aha, rub my hands. You've created space on the field just where I wanted it, where the ball's getting to Volemsa. you know, Will Jordan, these guys. That's who fans like to see, is the people who can come from deep and start doing things instead of just kicking the ball up again.

The other thing you mentioned to me was big moments. You know, there's no more attrition, you know, weighing them down and eventually they just sort of give way and you overpower them. And something that caught my attention last night, I had to ask Paul, because he was at the game, what does the back line look like now? because, you know, Q and all was suddenly somewhere and Andre was on and he was back off and on. Talk to me about that, you know, that shape of the back line.

And I want to bring this to the bigger moments. The kick-through that you just mentioned about Andre was at centre. When Damon scored that fantastic try that he did, where was he playing? Was he centre or was he full-back? I'm talking about moments but also fitting into the bigger scheme of things.

You know, is Q and really the answer at 10 maybe? I know this is not the Springbok side. We know that. But still, talk about that for me. Yeah, before the game, I tried to anticipate and write down, post it on X, what I thought the finishing side was.

You know, so up front, that's pretty easy. Kuno, Vessels, Porton. You know, we got that. Wasn't totally sure. You know, I thought Ruan had to be an 80-minute man, but I wasn't sure.

But it seemed to me that Kubas was going to go off. He went off, obviously, much earlier than we wanted. But it seemed to me that in the end, there would be some permutation of Ben Jason Dixon, and Ruan, which it turned out to be not a bad combo, actually. Hellaciously good in the line-out, I would say. That too.

Very good contest. Because that frees up Peter Steftatore to do his own contest at the front. And it's a hard line-out to throw into. Elric, Vince, Grant Williams bringing it home. And then I didn't know where you put Gaza, Andre, and Horn.

And so it turns out that the answer was, Harry it was wherever we wanted to on any particular play so yeah so there was a lot of musical chairs there so you're not wrong that when you said I don't know what it is you're not wrong and Paul's not wrong to say here's where they were but they were only there on the setup sometimes on phase three it wasn't that way so Willemse was playing 15-12 like he does at Stormers a lot so I'll be first receiver sometimes because 12 is a first receiver in top rugby nowadays They go from 9 to 12 sometimes, and then the 10 loops around. This is a very common play for Marnie, for Sasha. Ball goes to Damon D'Hallende. He's so strong in contact that he can hold you up. Andre Estevez, he's the pivot now, and then use the playmaker.

The French are doing that right now with their 12. Ball goes from Lukou, skips a channel, goes to the midfield. Intermac or Jalibert comes around. So I think that's perfect for a slower, older Pollard. He doesn't have to do as much to get there.

It's perfect for brilliant playmakers like Gaza, Sasha, and Marnie. Because now they have an extra bit of space. The ball's gone back, yes, 20 meters. But now you have acres of space to deal with. I think that's wonderful.

What I didn't like was that it seemed like on defense. It was not clear on defense who was doing what. So I think that's where you saw a comedy of errors. I'm also not convinced that you really want Andre Pollard at test level, tackling the biggest beasts of the kingdom or trying to chase down Siono Topolato. He's always going to beat Andre on the first move.

He's not going to beat Gaza, who's got proper balletic skills, so he can go left to right quickly. But I don't think Pollard's that's his game. Pollard's really good, though, at taking on a guy like Topolato. So you could have a situation where he's a 12 on attack, but not a 12 on defense. Now, look, I'm just saying, when you start doing that, because in rugby, you don't get to say, now we're on attack, now on defense.

It can happen like that. It can be very chaotic. And I think that's what you saw. And the big moments as well though is and I come back to Paul de Villiers now is you got to have a lot of hyperactive players to play this type of style you got to have a lot of people uh like ruan who just don don get tired i don know how he doesn't you know he looks like a guy who's tired from the opening kickoff running out ties him out you're right he looks like he needs a nap and then there he is at the end uh ruiz is not that kind of guy he is a short burst which it appears to me is completely fine in this type of rugby you're going to have your short burst guys and you're going to have your long carry guys and you kind of have to have both i don't think you want um well obviously the front row we've always said that um but i don't i don't think you want to have a guy like kubus visa on for the whole game either he's just really good and short bursts of incredible malicious carrying and and defending and then you have other guys who know how to you know jasper visa knows how to somehow ration his energy and he just he's just going to be a cj standard just give me the ball i'll keep going i'm a robot um yeah i think that's the mix they're trying to find if i do guess is rossi and co wanted to put these young guys under stress i think he wanted to throw them into the deep end of the pool i think he they knew it would be rough uh they knew scotland would score they were probably pleased that it was up 14-0 but they probably didn't believe it and they they were probably telling the guys you know watch out but there came you know proper score a proper team that had way more caps incredibly uh big cap gap and the caps were all coherent there were guys from 40 to 80 caps they know each other really well against a makeshift side where jesse was having to turn to a guy next time and go where are you playing you know what position are you that's that's rough well i was i think jesse was turning to his side and asking which damien are you i don't know if you saw on the team team sheet they said damien de allende is playing and jesse might have gone what on earth is going on yeah yeah this is becoming ridiculous i actually i'm inventing a character that's that's uh a blend of the two uh with ai and it's going to be it's going to be damien both willemsa and de allende um another thing that i'll say this and and this is about big moments that you just talked about. You don't want to give your opposition too many big moments opportunities.

So look at Scotland's way of playing, which I think is untenable. 233 passes. I mean, just think about that. Think about how many things can go wrong when you put the ball between two players in contact. 157 carries.

Yes, a lot of post-contact meters, but most of those post-contact meters got swallowed up by the scramble defense and you had to have so many tight forwards go so far to clean a rock that it was inevitable at the end that the score would blow out and you'd say things like, oh, it doesn't reflect the game. That's flattering. Not really, because that is still the slow poison part. It's just at the very end. It's like Wellington.

You know, we go like Marty Devlin. Well, we were close. We're there. Like, where are you? Because the design of the game was to get to an hour and then we blow your doors off.

So I think, you know, that's one cautionary tale, I'd say, for the people who think that Scotland was there or thereabouts, you know, winning by 14. Tackles completed, I'd be remiss at not pointing out. So many bulls doing so well. Ruan, 19 tackles. Incredible, right?

But also some people who are portrayed as show ponies. Ruiz, 15 tackles and didn't miss very many. Ruiz is used in Bockland differently than he is in Stormers. It was also pleasing to see him score and not get held up because there's some players, Krobalar, who at this level are not so sure about their ability to power through. You know, our friend Johan on our WhatsApp chat groups talks about how a week ago when Ben Jason Dixon went to score and he was easily able to not get held up.

Range, power, jujitsu, whatever you got to have. wait but when you i think yes there's there's now there's momentum and the momentum is is scaled so much that it's like a bridge over you they're going to score you don't want in now nowadays against the proper team in a really tough match at a final you do not want to get sucked into this idea that if we just keep plugging away then we're going to scoot over it's too easy for them to roll you over like a tortoise and then smother you so i thought that was really cool to see evan score And then how good is Paul de Villiers in carry, in space? I mean, this is what, it reminds me of Heinrich Brousseau in that lead up to Jacques Ferris' try. You know, running into that corner, knowing exactly where they put the ball, going to his right off his left hand, perfect spiral. There's something about the ball-playing ability of Paul de Villiers that I'm really enjoying.

I'm not saying that Sia's out of a job. I'm saying that it's really cool in a team that is a back-to-back champion trying to go back-to-back-to-back to have competition for every single spot. It makes Marnie better when he has Sasha around. It makes Andre better when he's not a guaranteed spot. It makes Grant Williams better when he's on the bench going put me in, you know.

I don't want to lose my spot. I wanted to ask you this question. You sent me a picture once that you took in the Stormers dressing room and what was noticeable for me was how small Paul DeVilliers actually is. And he reminded me of Whack-A-Mole yesterday. He just kept popping up everywhere.

And they couldn't stop him. It was like borrowing. And I said yesterday to Paul as well, I think, and still managing to get the offload away. You're not allowed to call it offload. The backwards pass, apparently.

But anyway, the fact is he didn't let the ball die with him. Isn't his size maybe a bit of a limiting factor? I'm not discounting his contribution at all. He had a fantastic game. I'm just talking about, you know, in general, Rossi likes big players and the likes, or was it a trend towards something new, maybe?

No, but there's a place for the small man in a pack if, and this is a big if, if they have good leg drive. And I think probably Paul probably has a better squat than some of the players that are 30 kilograms bigger than him. He's not tall, you're right, but that could be a plus for the ruck monkey, the ruck merchant. you've got to get into some very awkward spots and in some ways having a lower center of gravity and not having too much range on your arm is easier for you to get the picture to the referee that he wants when you look at the actual top level, like I've hung out with Fraser McWright, he's just a normal sized guy if you saw him walking around you wouldn't immediately think elite athlete Paul De Villiers on a plane, he was sitting right next to me in the plane like you were thinking maybe he's a I don't know a tennis player or something he doesn't look ferocious I'll put it this way he looks like a guy designed to withstand pain more than to inflict pain. Okay I'm going to ask you a little bit of a controversial question but there was so many question marks over Andre Pollard's head you know last two games for the Bulls, the semi-final and the final not really shooting the lights out I'm being polite here even Ruan and you know what a classic example and i'm not just thinking out the bulls here i'm talking about that minute little difference between what's happening at club level and junior is another one i would think i can think off the top of my head it may not quite be what's the difference between that club level and and the national level you know we talk about those small margins uh some coaches are fond of saying what is that where does what explain that to me well that's very interesting because you have two ways to look at this.

One is the levels. And like you said, there's a physical test match animal type level caliber that we like, okay, Paul De Villiers has checked that, ticked that box, right? That's easy. You see it now because that would have been a question mark. Completely legitimate.

Is he big enough? Is he strong enough? Okay, we know he is. But then you have a guy like in props, you have to do the set piece and you could crumble and it's just not findoutable until you're at test level. So that comes down to Don Humann looking at a tape, talking to a guy like Brock Harris and chatting about Mkuno.

So that's just how it is. It's no shame. It's just there are levels to it. And some people are not strong enough, quick enough, or have enough acuity or agility. So you put them there.

A classic case would be you think someone's a killer at a wing, at club level, and they get into the test level and they cannot handle the high ball. And no matter how much you try, it's just not their thing. So then you move on. It's fine. The more interesting part is the mind.

So there you get into, it's not just because one coach is better than another. It's just that you can have affinity and you can hear someone better. There's plenty of examples of people who just, they groove better. And I was thinking about some of these really crazy videos that Rossi puts out about they're just in the middle of the crew and suddenly they get out of a car and they're dancing around and just slugging clippies or whatever. He's building a troop of almost circus characters.

And he's encouraging them to be wilder and bigger. And I think the design of that, and I see that more at the Stormers as well, you know, is the project 2029 is let there be a bond between all of us and each of us in some way. Let us not get to, I don't know, one denominational. Like, let's have enough vibe that it works. And so when I saw the joy, and I'll just say it, it's kind of a weird word to use, of Corpus Visa in open space and Rouen as well, I kind of just went back to Dublin in my head and I kind of missed that.

The wild abandonment, playing with abandon. I think that's the right word. That was cool. Pollard is an interesting case. There's a part of me that thinks, I don't know, Andre, you know much better, that he was making business decisions sometimes.

I think he desperately wants to be the guy who went from 2015 to 2027 and actually get there he talks a lot about being a good team soldier and I'm sure he is he's nice to Sasha he's nice to Mane don't kid me man that guy will put his head in a meat grinder when it matters but when it doesn't matter I'm not so sure I'm just suggesting that maybe I'd be the same way you know like do i really want to end my career right here on a rainy night in dublin or do i want to be in sydney you know and just smiling my million dollar smile and saying you know you guys did you doubt you doubted me look at me so i like that um there was a picture of him and peter steph the toy looking the same way the same chin jutting the same fixed mouth and i just thought those guys have been playing together since 2014. How cool must that be? You know, when you just go, all right, now we're in the real stuff. So I think the mind games are there, but I think the mind games are between everyone. The binds, the bonds between player, physio, coach, assistant, analyst, the lucky guy that they always talk to right before they go on the field who manages the coats or something.

It doesn't matter. There's something there that is built well. Akaris, Dobbo our guys are still building that, they're still in the process and it's difficult because once your players get really good you lose them, they go overseas and I think you know the terminus the end, like this is where you're the best, it's the Bok land and you can be anywhere, come from Japan now we're here the best of the best, the sharp the iron sharpens the iron, there's something going on there that brings out the best in a guy like Pollard I want to say this. You know, when you're very comfortable in your position, you've got a contract going until 2031. No matter where you go play, you can always pick me again.

Like, for example, talk about the Bulls now. Wilke Lowe's leaving, so Wilke Lowe's no longer on the table. Whether Wilke Lowe plays with the Stormers, the Bulls, or Kubota, Spears, it doesn't matter. Russ, you can still pick him. That does make a difference, don't you think?

And also, the pressure's off. When a guy like Akers, you've got a two-year contract. Dobbo has got a lot of pressure on him. David Peterson has got a lot to prove and you've got all these moving pieces players moving, players being injured you don't have the luxury of going anywhere in the world just flying someone in, I need a new prop so let's get someone from Japan there is a difference, it is a different game it might be more difficult than everything else so in some ways it might be a little dare to say it easier but also you feel I don't know if Peter Siftis toy feels this because he seems impervious to normal human emotion it just comes out when it's like the big big, big moments. But, you know, if you're just a young guy, I don't know, just pick someone here, Bowen Fenter.

And you walk in, like, how, just how, you must look up to Rassi in a way. Like, it must be like skin tingling. A lot of people in punditry, whatever we do in pod land, they're so, like, starstruck, you know. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't think I am.

But I found it more interesting to talk to the guy, you know, like, he's just a guy in his 40s something 50 maybe you know he's just he's like all of us trying to figure out what to do but i i like him i instinctively like him but i think if you're a young player he would get the best out of you just by being awestruck you know like oh there's the great man you know like the first time you went to stellenbosch and you saw doc craven you know like there were people when i was a when i was trying to be the best rugby player i knew how to be where i ran into them and i was i was proper store i mean i was speechless so i think he's got that going from him the the aura as the kids say yeah he's got the aura that's where they came to my mind as well anyway harry thanks to this i appreciate it like i said stalin borscht is now firmly in my rearview mirror so back to business and uh we'll do another one later this week so looking forward to him thanks man appreciate it make your time for sunday how good is that thanks man This is the Lekker Rugby Pot. Only on Megaphone Rugby.

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