Not enough youth

The constant battle between experience and raw, exciting, new talent will likely never disappear in South Africa's rugby set up. But it is the constant strangling of this young talent beginning at a provincial level, where players who can provide so much more in terms of attacking options, flair and, might I say, enthusiasm, that leads player to look on from the sidelines until they are well into their 20s, or worse to start looking for an overseas berth. So-called 'experienced' players who in their time did no doubt add value to the squad are now merely space fillers. Players like Ruan Pienaar, who although it must be said does perform regularly at a club level, has provided little to nothing for South Africa at test level for a number of years and his distribution and 'tactical' kicking game leave much to be desired, yet we hold onto his experience for dear life where younger players like Rory Kockott (now 27) have been effectively bypassed for a number of years now despite outstanding form and offering more in every department than Ruan has in the last 10 years. This is just one of many such examples, some at provincial and some at National level. With the World Cup coming up next year there's a whole host of South African rugby fans who want see us at least try and improvise and attach with some kind of skill, flair, and a significant threat, which has been severely lacking in the recent past. This does not necessarily require compromising our basic structures that are so well entrenched but players require slightly more freedom to be allowed to use the skills and talents that got them their provincial and Springbok spots in the 1st place.