2012 England tour to SA

Hartley in the bin. Expect SA to go ahead now with a man up.

update: ripper ending coming up (not quite as heart stopping as Black Caviar tonight but still exciting, impressed with England hanging in there, about 7min to go)

A draw at FT, good effort at the end by England, both teams would be pissed with that result.

Well, I think that was the best game I've seen Olivier play. Maybe Meyer can get more out of him. Very average performance by SA overall though. They had the intensity at times, and were dominant for large parts of the game, but couldn't convert the pressure into points. Mostly because of silly mistakes and some play that didn't fit the pattern.

England were good in parts, and certainly their good defence contributed to SA making bad decisions, but even so (no disrespect) I think the Boks should still have taken this game.

England not helped by Steve Walsh though.

Despite some lacklustre rugby at times, I thoroughly enjoyed this tour. Let's do it again.

Disappointed performance from the Bokke but all credit to Pomland. They look hunger and motivated for this test. Haskell and Waldrom made a huge differense for them. We'll need Brusssouw urgently in our team. Coetzee and Jac Potgieter showed up in the test and look a bit light weight. After all the flak I gave Meisiekind I have to eat humble pie. Played a good one. Something is terrible wrong with Morne Steyn. He is in poor form at the moment.

Don't agree. I thought both stood up well. Especially pleased with Coetzee, he did the hard yards without being a glory hunter, I like those sort of players.

Agree. One of the better players on the day. Well done to him.

I thought Coetzee was good and close to our best forward. I agree with Paarl re: Potgieter though. He didn't let us down, but simply 'standing up' is not good enough for a 7 in the Bok game plan. The 7 needs to be a dominant ball carrier in the Alberts/Juan Smith/Schalk Burger mould to consistently get us over the advantage line, providing us with go-forward momentum.

Potgieter ran hard, but he wasn't able to get over gain line often enough (if ever?). Therefore he is too 'lightweight' for this position at test rugby IMO, as Paarl stated. The same could also be said for Olivier to some extent. He certainly didn't let us down and made one telling line break, but not often enough IMO. He also wasn't able to get the backline away at all (not aided by M. Steyn's poor performance) and I hardly remember seeing Jean de Villiers or the wingers with ball in hand, save for the times it was kicked to them by the English. This was in stark contrast to the first two tests.

If we are going to keep persisting with M. Steyn in the Rugby Championship, we NEED Lambie to play at 15 so that he can insert himself at first receiver at certain times and create the unpredictability that we clearly lack. But if M. Steyn's goal kicking keeps failing as it has, surely his days as Bok 10 must be numbered!