Are the players a bit 'Punchie' ?

Interesting article from Timeslive site. We all get a kicking.
Anyone for a pint ?
Extract:

"In a way the Boks are victims of their own environment because international rugby this year has been the worst I have seen.
With the exception of the All Blacks, teams have been exceptionally bad this year.
When they finally scored their breakaway try against England last week, the Aussies had gone something like three hours without scoring.
Wales are sitting on a five-game losing streak, Ireland were on a similar wicket before beating lowly Fiji, and the French are in the throes of impressing a new coach.
And the All Blacks haven't been that great either, bearing in mind that the opposition sides have been atrocious.
When the All Blacks feel they have a proper challenge to face, they usually whip out their other Haka, Kapa O Pango.
They have rarely had to use it this year, and sometimes they gave the impression they were having more trouble choosing a Haka than they were with their opponents.
There are two reasons for the malaise afflicting international rugby: the long season and over-coaching.
Punch-drunk rugby is what you get when your administrators keep promising broadcasters more money by simply adding more games.
The coaches have also become control freaks this season, with Meyer the poster boy for this behaviour, thanks to the unforgettable images of him constantly screaming into his walkie-talkie.
A great example of that is watching Pat Lambie, who instinctively knows what to do on the field, but looks visibly conflicted between what he would do and what he has been told to do.
There is also an obsession with massive backline players who have the creativity of a blunt object.
A great example of that is the Welsh backline, which has an average height and weight of 1.89m and 100kg.
Rugby used to be where we took refuge from our boring jobs.
Watching it has become a grudge purchase now, a national chore where beer has become an important ally in attempts to drink the game prettier"

http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2012/11/22/world-rugby-hits-new-lows

I think this is a great article.
I certainly agree with your point about over-coaching. This is very true in major sports around the globe. The challenge for coaches is the risks associated with losing is constantly increasing. Most coaches respond by becomong more restrictive and less flexible with how they want their teams to play. In a way, this is human nature because many coaches feel if they lose their jobs because of poor win-loss records, they want to lose it with the players doing things their way, not losing their jobs because of poor decisions by the players. As the stresses increase, so too does the controlling by the coaches. Kind of a death spiral. I think the most successful coaches are the ones who can finds the right balace and also have players smart enough (or simply taented enough) to play within a system without the need to be over-controlled.

Unfortunately, this is a fact of life in modern sport. And we see it more often in Rugby because Rugby is still evolving to modern sport whereas football, the American sports and so one are already there.

"At some level, De Villiers was right. Of all the rugby fans in the world, none subscribe to the theory that a win is a win is a win more than South Africans do.

The reason for that is simple: the Boks play the kind of ugly rugby which renders a Test match an 80-minute mugging.

In the past we haven't minded putting up with it because our persistence has often been rewarded with a rare match in which our national side play the game the way it was intended. Sadly, there will be no such luck this year as we might have already had our ration in the 31-8 thrashing of a patchwork Australia in September."

I agree with this RE SA.

Pretty accurate