@DbDraad This is a trend, not an isolated incident. Even Eben gets knocked backwards occasionally — it happened last weekend. Rugby is rugby; things happen. But when a player consistently exhibits the same weaknesses year after year, eventually you have to stop dismissing each example as an aberration.
Damian's defensive record has troubled me from the beginning. Earlier in his career there was the Wallaby Test in which three tries came directly through his defensive failures, with a fourth only narrowly prevented by Lambie of all people. He followed that with similarly meagre defensive showings against New Zealand, Samoa and Wales. These weren't isolated moments scattered randomly across a career; the same weaknesses kept resurfacing.
And they continued. In 2018 he was run over for a try against England. Then consider the 2019 World Cup final: on two occasions England broke through Damian's channel and Frans Steyn had to shut down the danger behind him. That is precisely the sort of thing that tends to disappear from the collective memory once the result is safely in the record books.
What genuinely baffles me is the almost complete absence of scrutiny from pundits and the rugby media. I cannot remember Damian ever being seriously called to account for what is now a very long record of costly defensive failures.
Compare that with the treatment handed out to Morné Steyn, John Smit, Schalk Burger, Percy Montgomery and even Pollard — who was being booed for Lambie against Argentina in 2015. Bok supporters have hardly been reluctant to turn on celebrated players when performances warranted criticism.
Yet somehow Damian has escaped virtually Scot-free and appears destined to be remembered as an all-time Bok great. Based on what, exactly? Longevity? Caps? Being present in successful teams? Those things are not the same as individual greatness.
If we're going to call somebody an all-time great, then at some point the individual's actual performances have to enter the conversation.
