Springbok captain Siya Kolisi backed his young backline and the Bok team to deliver a performance against the All Blacks in Wellington on Saturday that will get their Castle Lager Rugby Championship campaign back on track.
While coach Rassie Erasmus surprised with a new look young backline for the Wellington game, the pressure is on the Boks to stop a third loss in this year’s Rugby Championship. Kolisi said the preparation for the match had been good, but that the Boks can’t radically change their build-up to the match.
“You must prepare exactly the same as you do for every test. Nothing must change,” Kolisi said ahead of the game.
“There is so much at stake on Saturday, and so much pressure already, so we don’t need to add any more by adding new things.”
Kolisi added that the Boks prepared well in the areas they were poor last week in the loss at Eden Park.
“Apart from Sacha (Feinberg-Mngomezulu) coming in at flyhalf and taking charge of the running of the game, and Ruan Nortje and Lood de Jager taking care of the lineouts, nothing special or out of the norm has been done this week.
“If we look back at the games that we have won, the big games we have played, we never did anything different in our preparation.”
Wellington has had some good results for the Boks, with a win and a draw in their past two outings there, but the bigger picture is getting the Rugby Championship back on track.
“This game is also big on its own in that we want to win and stay in the Rugby Championship,” Kolisi added. And we want to win the Freedom Cup.”
The breakdown battle was a massive one last week and the All Blacks surprised the Boks with their strategy of flooding the breakdown.
“We definitely learned from the previous game. We saw the strategy they used and we’ve made plans for that. We’ll be ready for it this weekend.
“It’s good to have Jasper Wiese back, but they also have backs who counter at the breakdown. Leroy Carter, who came from sevens, we saw clips of him getting into breakdowns too. So it’s not just the forwards, it’s also the backline players.
“We know we weren’t good enough last week, especially on our exits, and they came hard at our breakdown. We worked on it this week and we’ve learned from it.
“The scrum sessions this week were hard – both packs put in the work. It’s never about who dominates who. We want to give our best to make sure both packs are ready for the game.
“It was very competitive, which was good, and I think the guys are ready for the weekend.”
The Boks finishing was also off key in Auckland and that has received attention this week in the lead up to the game.
“It was tough to see. To create 13 opportunities in the 22 and only take two of them – you don’t get that many chances. Some teams get that maybe in a year, and you rarely get that against the All Blacks.
“We saw how we stuffed it up, and a lot of it was our own doing. That was the difficult part. It was frustrating watching it back. Sometimes it was an individual error, and then another one.
“Hopefully we learn from it and fix it this weekend – when we get opportunities, we must take them. The All Blacks didn’t get a lot, but the ones they had, they took.”
Kolisi was also not worried about the mix of players and the relative inexperience in the team, saying he backed the selections to go out and provide a good measure of themselves.
“There’s a good mixture of players in this team. Most of the guys have played here before, some of whom have won two World Cups, so it’s not as though it is a completely new team.
“I’m keen to see this side in action, and I think some of the new faces will bring a different skillset to the match, which is exciting.”
The game kicks off at 9am and is live on SuperSport.