Neil Francis is shocked at South Africa coach Peter de Villiers’ substitutions in the First Test against the British and Irish Lions on Saturday.
Peter de Villiers might have thought that with twenty minutes to go that the 19-point margin would be enough.
Nobody knew whether if there was trouble or not as regards the players out on the field. Any of the players that he took off, most of them were smiling as they came off.
They weren’t crying, they weren’t huffing and they all had been playing well at that stage.
He took off his enforcer Bakkies Botha at the spine of the scrum. Scrummaging is a unit skill, and he is the power from the second row. By taking him off, suddenly their scrum is depowered.
Then he takes off his captain John Smit, he is such a vital guy that de Villiers won’t drop him. Bismarck du Plessis is a better hooker than him but they need the guy in the side, so they play him at tighthead.
But they take him off in a nervy last 20 minutes. He is the brains, the intellect, the guy who’s going to see them through it. Yet de Villiers puts on a crash test dummy in Deon Carstens, who has no vocal capabilities whatsoever.
Then they take off the best scrum half in the world in Fourie du Preez and put a guy on who shouldn’t even be in the squad. Ricky Januarie’s form has been terrible, but they put him in there with 20 minutes to go and he predictably had a shocker.
Morne Steyn has been playing well for the Blue Bulls, but froze when he came on.
Ruan Piennar, they call the Tiger Woods of rugby, and his accuracy and his execution and his tactical kicking was outstanding. He drove the Lions back there and he played brilliantly. They took him off.
Then they took their fetcher Heimrich Brussow off. He also had another brilliant game and in a situation in the last 20 minutes when a game becomes fluid you need guys to make tackles and win ball on the ground.
It becomes a bit more scrappy, the ball goes to the ground more, and yet they put on 6’7” Danie Rossouw who isn’t suited for that type of game.
Morne Steyn goes into midfield so the whole team is mixed up, it’s unbelievable that he would consider doing that. He just doesn’t realise the consequences of his actions.
Neil Francis was talking to TheHub on Setanta Ireland.