The Springboks finished 2024 as the leading team in World Rugby’s official rankings and the world champions’ assistant coach Deon Davids is looking to build on that success.
After winning their second successive Rugby World Cup in 2023, the Boks continued to impress in the international arena as they won 11 out of 13 Tests in 2024, and the two defeats which they suffered against Ireland and Argentina – both by one-point margins – meant they finished the year with a win rate of 84.6%.
Despite delivering excellent performances in most of their matches, things did not always go the Boks‘ way especially with regards to injuries.
Particularly concerning for Rassie Erasmus’ troops was when they had to deal with a crisis amongst their forwards when they were without the services of several locks due to injury.
However, Davids, who is in charge of coaching the Springboks’ lineouts, is happy that that challenging period is behind them and he is excited ahead of the upcoming international campaign.
‘We should be in a better situation’
“Last year we had a couple of challenges when it came to our locks and hookers as well, injuries really hit us hard but this year in 2025 we should be in a better situation,” he told Telecom Asia Sport.
“A lot of the injured guys are on the right track now, Lood de Jager and Franco Mostert will be back and are doing really well in Japan.
“Our local South African guys like Salmaan Moerat and Ruan Nortje have taken their opportunities, Salman has been physical and has picked up things nicely, while Eben Etzebeth has come back and is gaining form.
“We are really fortunate with the depth at lock and we are looking forward to having all our available locks on the park. I feel our locks handled the pressure well and we want to evolve from a technical point as well. So plenty of positives for our locks and lineout play.
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“Our coaching team has already done all the analysis, reviewed our game and looked at our opposition we will face this year. We are all well prepared and look forward to a great season ahead.”
A big part of the Boks’ success over the years has been their superb forward play which usually lays an excellent platform for their backs to launch attacks from.
The Boks’ lineout work is a key component of that forward play and under Davids’ guidance, South Africa came to the fore with several innovative moves at the set-piece in 2024 which reaped its rewards.
He wants to build on those efforts but knows that they can ill afford to rest on their laurels in 2025 and is determined to continue improving.
‘Some teams got clever’
“We got some good results with my lineout work, with the maul, some teams got clever in terms of how they stop our mauls and we did great analysis on that so that we can understand what challenges and threats we will go through this year,” he said.
“We always look to stay a step ahead of our opponents, and the main goal is always to get better because teams bring so much different tactics in order to counter our lineout play and in particular our driving mauls.
“So it becomes imperative for us to always become creative and this will present an opportunity to do your lineout play more effectively and it’s nice to share some ideas to the players and also to get some ideas from the players for us from a coaching view point because lineout play always links to attack or links to defence and so it’s good to have those conversations to ensure we spot on with our lineout game.
“It’s really a massive part of our game. My overall line for my boys in 2025 is to achieve dominance.”
Src: Planetrugby.com - https://www.planetrugby.com/news/springboks-coach-reveals-main-goal-as-they-look-to-achieve-dominance-in-2025
