The Springboks have no plans to take their foot off the gas in their preparations for the final match of the year against a struggling Wales, especially after a stuttering finish in their win over England at Twickenham.
Saturday’s opponents are coming off their biggest-ever defeat to Australia, which condemned them to an 11th-straight loss and has left them outside the top 10 Test sides in 11th place.
However, despite the Dragons’ lack of spark in 2024, the Boks, looking to end the year on a high, have no plans to take it easy this week.
This is especially after a struggling finish to their 29-20 win against England at Twickenham, where they spent most of the final 20 minutes on defence.
Following the match, Trevor Nyakane, in his role as a guest pundit on SuperSport, already anticipated Duane Vermeulen’s frustration with the performance, especially with the number of penalties conceded on defence.
“Duane is going to climb into them for sure,” Nyakane said in the SuperSport studio.
“It’s an area that he likes himself, something that he was very good at when he was still playing. I am 100% sure, probably Monday that they will take it a little bit easy, get through the kicking game and all that. But, on Tuesday, there are going to be a few t-bags [tackle bags] that are going to be hit at training.
“They will definitely look at the lineouts and see what went wrong and try to fix it.”
The Springboks conceded plenty of penalties from defending lineouts in the final quarter, which led to loosehead prop Gerhard Steenekamp – on early as an injury replacement for Ox Nche – getting yellow carded and tighthead Vincent Koch having to shift across the scrum.
“At the time, like I told Nick [Mallett], there were two tightheads on the field. In training, you always train at tighthead and the other guy is a loosehead. We get a yellow card and now we’ve got two tightheads on the field,” Nyakane explained.
“I’m not sure if they missed the call or if they weren’t really sure. If I was there, I would’ve trained at tighthead all week, and now you put me at loosehead and if they don’t make a simple call, then it’s chaos.”
Speaking to the media from the camp in Cardiff, Steenekamp, set to get a starting role against Wales, said the Boks will be going full-out in training this week, as they look for their 11th win of the year.
“I don’t think there is such a thing as an easy Test. When you take your foot off the accelerator, you’ll land in a downward spiral. For us as players, this Test is as important as any other,” the Vodacom Bulls prop said.
Assistant coach Deon Davids demanded an improvement in discipline and said the Boks had already discussed the issues on Monday.
“This is especially true in the lineouts and I tackled it from my side. Jaco (Peyper, the Bokke’s advisor on rules, who is on tour) also offered a referee’s perspective on it. We talked about the accuracy of our execution and the impact of that,” Davids said.
“We haven’t conceded as many penalties in defensive line positions in the last few years. It’s something we take pride in under normal circumstances, so it was looked into.
“We were perhaps a bit unlucky on a few occasions as well. However, we do not want a perception to arise that we are a team that concedes penalties in certain areas of the game.”
Photo: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile via Getty Images
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Src: sarugbymag.co.za
