The Springboks won't stop evolving their game, but will remember to keep hold of what has worked for them in the past.
The Springboks won’t throw away the progress they have made in evolving their game, as they look to bounce back from a shock loss against the Wallabies when they face the same opponents in their second Rugby Championship Test at the Cape Town Stadium on Saturday (kick-off 5:10pm).
The visitors from Down Under stunned the Boks 38-22 at Ellis Park last weekend, which was their first win at the ground in the professional era. A lot of the criticism has since been aimed at the Boks’ all-out attacking gameplan, which allowed them to race into a 22-0 lead, before essentially running themselves off their feet, as the Aussies ran in six tries and 38 unanswered points over the rest of the match.
Coach Rassie Erasmus has clearly indicated that the team will be going back to their more conservative, forward driven power game for the second Test, backed by their traditional “bomb squad”, but said he felt they were still on the right track.
“We can’t overlook what we did in that first half and how well it went for us then and throw that away,” said Erasmus this week. “If you go back to 2019 (when we won the World Cup in Japan), we played like Australia played against us this past Saturday.
“It was a case of defend, defend, defend again and then kick it to us with the mindset of ‘we will let you guys play and if you make an error we will pounce on it’. But we don’t believe playing like that is the way to win the next World Cup in 2027.
One bad game
“There is no way we will throw away what we have been working on over two or three years because of one game where it suddenly went wrong for us and we conceded three tries in quick time. We won’t do that.
“We have been working too hard to get some stuff in place over the last two or three years to just abandon it. We’ve made a lot of progress and we believe in what we are doing.”
But this weekend’s match is vitally important for the Boks’ goal of defending their Rugby Championship title, as they then head on what is set to be a blockbuster two match tour of New Zealand.
If the Boks can pick up a bonus point win on Saturday it will put them into a solid position going into their games against their biggest rivals, the All Blacks, where they would need to pick up at least one win there to give themselves a shot of retaining the title.
But, another loss would send them Down Under in poor form and with the unlikely task of picking up two wins to get themselves back into the competition.
