You hit the nail on the head Moz. What makes it particularly frustrating is that I think Sacha and Esterhuizen potentially constitute the most dangerous 10/12 combination in Test rugby, and perhaps one of the most naturally complementary combinations the Boks have ever had.
Sacha reminds me somewhat of Quade Cooper, except I think his physical gifts give him an even higher ceiling. There is that same ability to see and attack space, improvise and turn a defensive picture into something completely different in an instant, but Sacha is bigger, extraordinarily quick and a much more threatening runner himself. Why then constrain him to repeatedly receiving the ball against an organised defensive line? The object should be to manufacture the broken picture for him. The Sexton wrap is a perfect example. Get the ball out of Sacha's hands early, put Esterhuizen into the defensive line and then give it back to Sacha once that line has been forced to make decisions.
And Esterhuizen is almost purpose-built for it. People tend to reduce him to his size, but his Harlequins years demonstrated that there is considerably more to him than being a battering ram. He can carry, draw defenders and offload. If he takes the ball hard enough to engage the opposition 12, while the outside backs threaten width, suddenly Sacha is coming back around at pace against defenders whose shoulders and attention have already been manipulated. That's an entirely different proposition from asking him to manufacture something from a standing start.
Then consider what sits outside them. Pace everywhere, with genuine finishing threats stretching the defence horizontally, and potentially Damian Willemse entering the line as another playmaker and running threat. Who does the defence actually key on? Esterhuizen can go through you, Sacha can go around you or through a gap, Willemse can appear as another distributor or runner, while the outside backs punish any defender who starts biting inwards. You have the personnel to create layer upon layer of uncertainty.
That's what makes the missed opportunities so irritating. We keep hearing about innovation, but innovation doesn't have to mean inventing another novelty that gets clipped for social media and then disappears. The best attacking systems contain relatively simple mechanisms that can be used repeatedly because they present several possible outcomes. The Sexton wrap wasn't effective because nobody had ever seen it before; everyone knew it was coming. It remained effective because the defence still had several threats to solve.
With Sacha, Esterhuizen and Willemse, I think we potentially have the ingredients for the finest attacking combination the Boks have ever fielded. Add the speed available outside them and the possibilities become ridiculous. But possessing those weapons and actually constructing an attack designed to exploit them are two different things.
Sacha shouldn't merely be given permission to run when an opportunity happens to appear. The system should be deliberately manufacturing those opportunities for him.
