The fact that he got up after and carried on playing shows what a toughie he is. That was no biachslap he received.

Somebody else needs to fight the “central player contacting system” battle in the media. He should perhaps get the SA Players Association to put their foot down on the amount of rugby the guys have to play. They are good at ensuring contracts are done fairly so why not let them carry the agenda for reducing national players amount of rugby games? If the players and their representatives and associations are not singing the same tune as HM then why should SARU? Collective pressure from all stakeholders will be much more effective than an under pressure sub 50% winning rate coach.

Not so much right or wrong here.

I am quite interested by the outcome of this as much as anyone. I am off the belief SA players play more rugby than their NZ elite counterparts and I am open to any statistics that show otherwise – so far, two players looked at suggests we do.

@PissAnt-179:
very interesting, thanks.

i mean no offence but XhosaKid mentioned he was in stats/finance/numbers or something related so am surprised by how he’s come up wrong on this (going by your numbers and analysis of course).

No not really.

Because in that period Smit missed 10 tests through injury, 6 in 2008 after the Thorne tackle which took out his groin and 4 on the Grand Slam tour in 2010 to Europe because he had to go for an operation. Smit was only ever rested in extraordinary circumstances since 2004. His absence in any other test match was through injury.

Even that being the case, Smit still played more than Keven at test level.

So that is two players now that we can hold up in this debate, Morne and John vs. Dan and Keven.

ja, deysel is an yster. i dont know who’s tougher, him or kanko considering kanko got up immediately after that head high stiff arm elbow tackle to his throat/larynx/esophagus by that KIW prop.