Critical eye on rugby progress

ANONYMOUS WRITES:

Mr Allister Coetzee is the spectacle yesterday [4 March] at the Hage Geingob stadium part of preparation for Rugby World Cup.

I think you should start introducing these foreign internationals you intend to “use” at RWC into the Welwitchias set up.

If the locals that played yesterday are not part of your plan for RWC, why the humiliation of a 81 point drubbing?

Bring in your foreign based internationals to prepare in the CC competition.

Either get a home base in Stellenboch or Potchefstroom for the duration of the CC campaign and integrate your foreign based internationals through the CC campaign, or are the local players being rewarded with participation in CC because they perform in the local club competition.

There are 188 days left to kickoff against Italy at RWC, which I am sure we can target as a possible win. 18 days from that we face Uruguay which has to be a definite win.

So bottomline is, in preparing for that Italy clash, focus energy, prep, planning etc. towards that first 80 mins of RWC on the 9th of September. To have two or three warm up games against a tier one nation three weeks before RWC won’t be sufficient. Its been tried and tested. Allister we are counting on you to prepare our players to the best of the abilities, given the resources and competition schedule at your disposal. Put pressure on WR, consult your previous employer SARU, with you on board alot can be done, but honestly at the moment you are preparing our team, the pride of our country, like it’s a club team.

Let me remind you why you are a benefit to our RWC campaign.

Your experience as a coach, knowledge and intel about the Italian side as you spend more than six months of the year there coaching the club team Rovigo.

Your close relations with SARU, negotiating around setting a home base in SA, which will ease the strain and challenges on traveling.

The respect you have gained as a coach by players and coaches.

You know our local players are not “fit” to compete well in the CC competition and they won’t be featuring in your RWC squad and with the exception of very few local players. Don’t create false hope and deplete the high performance grant resources.

Soon you’ll be falling out of favour with the nation.

Just remember, this team belongs to us all, and don’t think we’re keeping the head coach Crysander Botha accountable for these results. The tactic of throwing him in the deep end and portraying it as “development of a coach”, is nonsense. We hold you accountable. This is not a development year for rugby in this country, it’s a performance year. It’s the Rugby World Cup. We need the players to perform.

You can do much better. Start doing it please.

Thank you.

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