‘Player behaviour has got to change’ – Schalk Burger weighs in on croc rolls, offers ‘underrated fix’
Springboks great Schalk Burger and Kurt-Lee Arendse's croc roll that resulted in a yellow card.
Springboks great Schalk Burger has weighed in on the rise of croc rolls in the game and believes the behaviour of the players has to change.
Burger, who played 86 times for South Africa, says there is a far safer and more effective way to clear out a jackler – an underrated skill that few are making use of.
The ex-flanker’s remarks come off the back of two controversial incidents during South Africa’s mid-year internationals. The first saw Caelan Doris being sin-binned for a croc roll on Malcolm Marx, which resulted in the latter breaking his leg.
The second incident occurred during the Springboks‘ victory over Portugal with Kurt-Lee Arendse also spending 10 minutes on the sidelines.
Schalk Burger on the croc roll
In May this year, World Rugby finally moved to ban the ‘crocodile roll’ tactic adding it as a clear sanction in the law book with it previously being penalised under ‘reckless’ play if not at all.
This also came off the back of banning players from dropping their weight on the lower limbs of the opponent at the ruck as World Rugby ramps up the player safety laws in an attempt to limit the number of long-term injuries.
Burger fully endorses the changes, particularly considering his former team-mate Jean de Villiers’ past injuries because of such incidents.
“Players’ behaviour has got to change and I think that’s where you know the croc roll with Kurt-Lee Arendse comes in,” the Springboks great said on the Verdict show reviewing South Africa’s win over Portugal.
“We want to change because of what happened to Malcolm Marx, breaking his leg like that.”
While the 41-year-old is keen to see players changing their approach to the breakdown, he was not convinced that the Springboks winger’s action deserved a card.
“For me, there’s no real force in the situation but Kurt-Lee does get into a croc roll situation and the issue is the leg and where you tilt your body,” he explained.
“And then you twist the body where the knee, ankle and leg can break so you want to change there and the same as the neck roll but in this situation, there is no force.”
Offering an alternative and safer way to clear a jackler, Burger added: “You want to be targeting the space between the ball and the player’s arms – I think it is an underrated skill that players target the arms and not the body of the opponent.
“If Kurt-Lee had hit the arms, he would have got him off the ball cleanly.”
Andre Esterhuizen’s red card
Burger also weighed in on Andre Esterhuizen’s red card for a dangerous tackle that ended his and Jose Lima’s game in Pretoria.
He believes that the centre was unlucky to have his yellow card upgraded to a red but again noted the Bok player’s poor technique.
“It was so unlucky for Andre like for me the yellow card is probably the right call. I didn’t see it coming that it would be upgraded to a red card,” he said.
“It was bad technique from him, his head was on the wrong side which eventually caused the head-on-head collision – he hit chest-on-shoulder first.”
He added: “For me it is just a rugby collision and yellow at best. He does get his head on the wrong side – if his head was behind the player, there is no head-on-head and it goes down as a proper good hit and the play would continue. I thought there was mitigating circumstances both ways.
“What you see in the previous two weeks that’s a yellow card and then you go to this and it goes up to a red card, we’re starting to walk that line of inconsistency because is this now what a red card constitutes or do we have mitigation where that is yellow it’s good enough.”
READ MORE: Nigel Owens weighs in on Andre Esterhuizen’s ‘very, very difficult’ red card
