Springbok captain Siya Kolisi has backed up what his coach Jacques Nienaber said a week ago - the World Cup champions will not hold onto their title if they do not move on from the template that won it for them in 2019.
Of course, the Boks are already doing that. Up until the last end of year tour, evolution was happening slowly. Then it started to accelerate when Kolisi’s team played against France in Marseille. And the wins over Italy and England that ended the four match tour were an endorsement.
But still, it did need someone to say “This is the way we are going now”, or the switch to a more dynamic attacking game might have been interpreted as a horses for courses approach to fit the circumstances, meaning the players who were available, at that particular time. Nienaber, in the first week of the alignment camp currently being held in Cape Town, and now Kolisi have done that and for those opposition coaches who have long felt that conservatism has held the Boks back, this is a time to start quaking in the boots.
“We're growing and the nice thing about it is that the coaches have set the standard and said there's no way you can do what you did in 2019 and win now,” says Kolisi.
The World Cup winning Bok skipper has been keeping an eye on the Six Nations and says that the northern hemisphere international competition is confirming the switch towards a more high tempo game that the South Africans need to be prepared for.
“As you can see with the Six Nations, everything is being made much faster, so we’re preparing for that, and step by step we’ll get there.”
Kolisi said the fitness requirements had been amped up by the evolution of the international game, and it increased the importance of the three week alignment camp that will end on 10 March.
“The game has changed, the rules are changing the whole time, and the game is getting faster. So, we're working hard on our fitness,” said Kolisi.
Apart from fitness, the Boks are working on some technical aspects of the modern game, and are looking to further improve on their success rate in meeting the requirements of the tackle law.
“We are one of the teams that has conceded the least number of penalties. And we want to take it down even more,” said the Bok skipper
“The game is being played at a much lower level, which means body height. And that's what we're working on. We're big men but you don't get a lot of us making tackles higher than they should be because we've worked so hard on our fundamentals to make sure that, whatever the rule is, we're already doing that.”