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Boks v England: ‘Past results, including 2019 final, mean nothing’
The world champions will be out to end their UK tour on a high having already beaten Wales and Scotland.
The Springboks need to beat England at Twickenham this weekend to end their UK tour unbeaten. Picture: Steve Haag/Gallo Images
This weekend’s clash against England is a new challenge with the Springboks putting no emphasis on their previous encounters with them, including the 2019 World Cup final, as they look to end their UK tour on a high.
The Springboks enjoy a 26/15 win/loss record over the hosts, including an 11/10 record in England, while their most recent clash was the World Cup final where they claimed a thumping 32-12 win, however, none of that matters, according to prop Steven Kitshoff and coach Deon Davids.
“We have been taking it (the tour) game by game. The World Cup final is in the past and this is a new challenge, so we are looking forward to a great week of preparation,” said Kitshoff on Monday.
“So for us we don’t really look at the past results, we only focus purely on the game at hand on the weekend.”
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The Boks will thus be gunning to continue the momentum built from claiming three wins in a row against New Zealand, Wales and Scotland and pick up another win to end the year on a high, which will give them great momentum to take into the 2022 season.
“Our focus entirely is to win the Test match. We set ourselves a goal coming into the end-of-year-tour to build momentum into next year and take it game by game,” explained Davids.
“Our focus was fully on Wales and then Scotland in the build-ups and we will have the same approach going into this Test match against England and that is to focus on being the best we can be, so that is the way we approach this week.”
England will no doubt still remember the World Cup final defeat, while a number of their players were on the losing side again during the British and Irish Lions tour, so they will be out for a bit of revenge.
“England is a quality side, Eddie (Jones) is a good coach, they’re making some good plans and have got some exciting players coming in,” said Davids.
“For us it is just to go into this game building on the lessons we have learnt in the previous games against Wales and Scotland and using that unity and focus on the new task at hand.
“We understand it is going to be tough as any game against England at Twickenham is, so we know we need to be entirely focussed.”
