Late on Saturday night, as many Springboks fans knocked back another stiff drink and prayed to the heavens, Bongi Mbonambi rumbled over and snatched his country a dramatic victory.

There’s a very good chance that you were already a few too many sheets to the wind to remember that moment with great clarity, so perhaps it’s worth popping the highlights below before we carry on.

There’s no commentary, but that doesn’t detract from the sheer joy of watching that final rolling maul:

Glorious.

Of course, a late try doesn’t paper over the fact that it’s been a somewhat ordinary tour of Europe thus far. Many fans around the world agree that we were robbed by a poor reffing decision late on against the English (something Rassie was clearly miffed about), but our lack of clinical finishing during that first half made us our own worst enemy.

No disrespect to the French, but this past weekend’s match wasn’t exactly a high-quality affair.

Two Springbok players who consistently come under scrutiny are Willie le Roux and Faf de Klerk, and Heinz Schenk, writing for the Citizen, believes that they are very much overrated.

He believes that “Rassie Erasmus has actually worked wonders in making two such fundamentally flawed players the cornerstones of his national team”, and gives him credit for that, but doesn’t hold back with his criticism:

Le Roux, to me, is not a world-class fullback. His attacking prowess makes him a decent option as an impact player, but he’s actually not a good player at this level.

Le Roux’s kicking game is a massive weakness, as evidenced by some of the hacks he booted in Paris, his defence remains underpowered and his decision-making suspect.

The last point is very important.

The 29-year-old operates almost fully on instinct – seldom will he be able to replicate the good thing he did on a field 10 minutes later.

One of his “trademark” skip passes will create space and momentum to score points. But three of those will also occur with him crowding every other member of the backline through a diagonal run BEFORE he actually passes.

Le Roux is the embodiment of a player whose left hand doesn’t know what he right does. To “survive” playing like that at this level, you need a healthy dose of confidence and he undoubtedly does have that.

However, it also leads to moments of sheer impetuosity like his forward pass to what should’ve been Aphiwe Dyantyi’s winning try at the weekend.

To me, that piece of play was arrogant and lazy, especially for a man with 51 international caps.

That forward pass to Dyantyi was pretty infuriating, and had it not been for Bongi’s winner, Willie would have once again been hauled over the coals in the post-match critiques.

As for Faf…

De Klerk has been good in 2018 and currently he’s undoubtedly the best scrumhalf the Boks possess.

What makes him better than Le Roux is that he does have one fundamental aspect of his position nailed down – his service is consistently snappy.

Yet his kicking, especially from the base, is invariably more reflexive than considered and as we saw in Paris, when the decision-making goes haywire, it’s an ugly sight.

De Klerk also suffers from the same bouts of rash decision-making as Le Roux, particularly on defence like we saw with his hit on French flyhalf Camille Lopez.

It wasn’t horrendously bad, but it was still inconsiderate and led to what French fans believed was the winning penalty.

De Klerk still has time to grow and become more versatile, but he nonetheless needs to be bracketed in the same category as Le Roux.

He is overrated exactly because the Springboks and their fans don’t know if the grass might be greener with Embrose Papier or Ivan van Zyl, simply because the these two men don’t get picked enough!

The incumbent number nine’s kicking against France was certainly far from accurate, and when things go wrong with Faf, they can often go very, very wrong.

Then again, that’s the price you pay with mercurial playmaker types.

We break briefly to look at one of the most skew scrum feeds of all time:

Forget the result for a moment. How are we POSSIBLY allowing this excuse for a scrum feed? pic.twitter.com/ViaUN1G0K4

— Front Row Grunt (@FrontRowGrunt) November 11, 2018

Here’s how Schenk finishes his piece:

World class players fall back on their unfashionable skills and duties when the going gets tough and shelve moments of magic for when they’re most appropriate.

After all, Test rugby isn’t a carnival with candyfloss stands.

And that’s not Le Roux and De Klerk’s forte.

There are some very good points made there, and Willie and Faf are the types of players that often leave Springboks fans shouting at the screen.

On the other hand, they are often responsible for key passages in play that can make or break a test match.

Given that we are without Faf this weekend, when we take on the Scots, the window of opportunity for Ivan van Zyl and Embrose Papier is now open.

It looks like Ivan will start, and if he puts in a stellar performance, that number nine berth could become even more contentious.

[source:citizen]