It's the very reason I didn't even bother Blake to respond Blake, it keeps popping up every now and again. Let them hang on to that perception, don't know how it actually helps, but whatever floats their boat I guess.Blake wrote: Fri Jan 26, 2024 1:25 pmAgainst the B&I Lions it was most definitely happening. It was a tactic that had to be used at the time to compensate for the Springboks' poor conditioning leading into that tournament...and also because half of the test side had recoevred from Covid 2 weeks before the first test!
Since then this notion that the Boks are "slowing the game down" is a very persistent myth. They are quite often pushing the pace as there is little advantage in slowing things down and allowing the opposition forwards to recover, when we have a fresh bench to bring on! How does that even make sense logically?
A stat that somehow proves how the Boks are slowing things down is how long a half of rugby takes and a good example being the match vs the All Blacks at Twickenham which took about an hour. But when you look closely it wasn't the Boks slowing that game down. The stoppages were due to an All Black injuries (around 10 minutes) and repeated penalties (leading to a yellow card) in the first 20 minutes. The stats show that teams concede more penalties against the Boks than against any other opposition. Teams tend to infringe a lot when when the Boks try to up the tempo.
But like some of the other myths surrounding Bok rugby these things persist, regardless of the evidence to the contrary, and that's fine. It's actually to our advantage if the opposition believes it. But then again I'm sure the other coaches are smarter than the fans and know that it's all BS.
