Rassie is probably the best coach SA has ever had.
Silverware can't be argued with. Whatever the details are from year to year, those will fade, and history cares only about what's in the cabinet.
But what is interesting is to look at the coaches that have come before and the general strength of South African coaches.
Outside of Rassie there are probably three Saffa coaches that deserve the respect they get. Those being Van Graan, Franco Smith and Swys.
For me, it has always been the case that, in general, South African coaches are one dimensional, unimaginative and very quick to run out of ideas. I mean, look at the stream of coaches we had before Rassie. The player talent pool has always been there, yet we have found ourselves being thrashed by Ireland, losing to Argentina at home, who have a fraction of the players we do, and getting knocked out of a world cup by bloody Japan.
Yes, you could say that England have more rugby players, but the vast majority of those players are Sunday social players. When it comes to highly completive rugby, SA dwarfs everybody else in terms of the amount of players and talent pool. And yet, for the longest time the national team results never came close to looing like it. There has always been a delta between what we should achieve and what we do achieve.
To me, Rassie is the first Bok coach that actually matches the talent of the players at his disposal but one has to wonder what guys like Joe Schmidt or Farrell would achieve with the Boks. What about a coach like Hansen?
Take Ireland, for example. Who do they have when JGP goes? Their best 10 is currently Pretender and he wouldn't catch a sniff of the Bok side. We have three better front rowers than their starting guys in each position. The list goes on. It's pretty much same for any side we compare ourselves to, bar a few outliers per team.
Now, we can say that this is because Rassie has built amazing depth. That's both obvious and true. But what often gets left out of that line of thought is that its only possible because we have the players for him to be able to do that. Could he do the same with England, Ireland, Argentina or Scotland? No, of course not. I'm even doubting he could do that with the All Blacks. What other team could have five or six locks on the injury list and still put England away comfortably...because you can just call up guys like like BJD, Wiese and van Heerden? The answer is, nobody!
This post is not to dismiss Rassie's achievements. Rather, its to say that Rassie has proven that we should have been achieving a lot more all along and whatever happens when he goes, the public need to be far harsher on whomever follows him than we were on those that preceded him.
