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Ex Bok's seven-word response to claims Ireland are the world's best

Ireland celebrate a try/ PA

After three rounds of Guinness Six Nations action, many figures in the game have hailed runaway leaders Ireland as the best team in the world, but former South Africa centre Robbie Fleck has a simple response to that.

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The 31-cap Springbok replied to those claims by asserting “they are not playing against quality opposition,” on RPTV’s Boks Office podcast recently.

Fleck is not the first former South Africa player to bite back at such claims, as they have understandably leapt to the defence of the reigning back-to-back world champions the Springboks, who sit at the summit of the World Rugby rankings.

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Former Springbok centre and Stormers coach Robbie Fleck says Ireland don’t have quality opposition in this year’s disappointing Six Nations. Watch the full show on RugbyPass TV

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Former Springbok centre and Stormers coach Robbie Fleck says Ireland don’t have quality opposition in this year’s disappointing Six Nations. Watch the full show on RugbyPass TV

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The former Bath centre has not been impressed by the standard of Ireland’s opposition so far this Championship, and therefore believes Andy Farrell’s team cannot be regarded as the unofficial world number ones.

Even if Ireland go on to win a likely Grand Slam, it is unlikely that Ireland will convince Fleck and many of his compatriots of their status at the top of rugby.

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The true test for many South Africa supporters, and perhaps even Ireland too, will come in July when Peter O’Mahony leads his side into a two-Test series against the Springboks.

When asked what he thinks of this year’s Six Nations by Hanyani Shimange, Fleck replied “not much”.

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“Pretty disappointing England,” he added. “You need the traditional guys to be strong. France have been disappointing as well. So there’s only one team in it really.

“Patches of brilliance with Scotland which you always get with Gregor Townsend and the players he selects. Finn Russell, Huw Jones and Duhan van der Merwe, they’ve all been good, but there’s no real competition for Ireland, which has been quite frustrating and disappointing, to be honest.

“Everyone talks about the Irish now being number one in the world, but they can’t be because they are not playing against quality opposition.

“Yes, we’ll see when we play Ireland in the [July] Tests, but for now the Six Nations has been disappointing in terms of the overall product.

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“There’s one really good genuine side in the Irish team and they deserve that, they are very well coached, they’ve got quality players, but England have been disappointing, France have been disappointing.”

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Comments

17 Comments
J
John 289 days ago

Nobody in Ireland is really claiming this and what’s the point? The two teams play each other in the summer so that will be as good of a gage as can be had. Yes one or two teams in the six nations have been disappointing but back to back GSs have never been done in the six nations.

D
Dan 289 days ago

Who cares what an ignorant third world educated thicko thinks? Wouldn’t know a good rugby team because the Boks have been inferior for far too long and SH rugby is utter shite. And their MVP, Barnes, is now retired. Nowhere to go but down n

T
Turlough 289 days ago

I agree with him. We don’t know how good Ireland are. In fairness as RWC champs SA should hold the best team mantle until the upcoming matches with pretenders Ireland and New Zealand.
I think this weekend will give us a better idea where Ireland are at. Teams have to play this weekend. Ireland could still lose the last two matches.
The who’s the best stuff is just click bait nosnense. What is magic for Saffers and Irish fans is the upcoming series. What a great spectacle International rugby is!

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JW 5 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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