Santa's coming to town.

Seeing it is the Festive season and Santa is visiting my house (how he is getting in, I don't know as I have no chimney) in a little over 48 hours I have decided to send him a belated request for a present.

Needless to say my request has little to do with pie in the sky, airy fairy wishes, but all to do with the harsh reality of International rugby and the future success of my beloved Springboks.

My request is to have it all this coming year and have all my wishes fulfilled. So I am starting off with my dream coaching team, I will naturally be the head coach ( Of course I am an armchair critic, but it has never stopped me before in making my thoughts clear as to how and what the Boks should do) and my assistant coaches will be Rassie Erasmus and John Mitchell.

My squad will be:

1. Beast Mtwarira
2. Bismarck du Plessis
3. Jannie du Plessis
4. Eben Etzebeth
5. Anton Bresler
6. Schalk Burger
7. Willem Alberts
8. Duane Vermeulen
9. Francois Hougaard
10. Johan Goosen
11. Raymond Rhule
12. Patrick Lambie
13. JP Pietersen
14. Paul Jordaan
15. Frans Steyn

Subs
16. Coenie Oosthuizen
17. Adriaan Strauss
18. Andries Bekker
19. Marcelle Coetzee
20. Sarel Pretorius
21. Jaco Taute
22. Willie le Roux.

We will only kick from within our 22, the occasional kick outside of the 22 will only be in attacking form, whether the grubber, chip kick, cross kick is called for will be entirely up to Goosen and Lambie, on the odd occasion they will be permitted to utilise the up and under, but really only if it is wet conditions and the opposition is suspect under the high ball.

Similar to the situation where a baskett ball coach will tell his team not to score unless 4 passes have been complete, multiplay attacks will be the minimum criteria.

The maul will only be used to set up the set phase from Line out, no driving mauls further than 5 meters are permitted, and then only as a one off option, not to be repeated endlessly throughout the game.

No forward will run onto a crashball, unless he has a support runner on either shoulder, the alternative will be the pick and drive until those support runners are available.

Every player must make a minimum of 2 offloads per match, performance bonusses will be awarded for the process used by the players and not the results. If you make an error of judgement (poor pass, poor offload, not reading the opportunity presented etc.) you will be fined.

The player will have a base starting point match fee, and every negative play or error will cost him 10% of his match fee.

No player playing outside of SA will be considered.


What's your wishlist?

Biltong, John Mitchell will be right at home with all those statistical conditions.

You reckon he would request for Carlos Spencer to be there?

Carlos and Mitch, rugby's version of "the odd couple".

They actually are a brilliant combination merely for the fact that they are so different.

Great fight Spencer put on in the charity fight for life here last week, a real brawl with McCracken. How Spencer keeps looking like that is beyond me. As ripped as a bad tabloid.

Mitchell also wont like the assistant tag. He must be his own boss as things only work one way for him (until they inevitably fall apart that is).

Interesting year next year for sure, everyone vying for new top dog...

Carlos did very well in that fight, As Crackers is a very tough fighter (just not a boxer) your right Carlos spends a lot of time in the gym.