Rugby Championship still a priority for Boks, but Nienaber is also realistic

Jacques Nienaber is still performing a delicate balancing act in which the Springboks’ ambitions of winning the Rugby Championship are being weighed up with the need to provide match time for a number of players. 

The Boks close the southern hemisphere competition on Saturday week against Argentina at Ellis Park, with their hopes of annexing that tournament depending on the outcome of the earlier match that day between New Zealand and Australia in Melbourne.

“If Australia do us a favour, then potentially it’s a decider for the Rugby Championship,” the Boks’ head coach said on Wednesday. 

Nienaber also spoke of taking momentum into the Rugby World Cup, something a Rugby Championship crown would ensure, but with that out of the team’s hands for now he remains acutely aware of players needing to have more match time under their belts. 

The opening 20 minutes against the All Blacks in Auckland showed the value of having players on the park with some miles in their legs and more so greater awareness about the accelerated pace of the Test game. 

New Zealand made five changes from the team that had won a week earlier against Argentina and also flew their entire squad to Mendoza, while the Boks flew 13 players to Auckland early, starting eight of them in the 35-20 defeat at Mt Smart Stadium.

The All Blacks blitzed the Boks, scoring 17 points in as many minutes as a plethora of penalties and innumerable individual errors proved costly.

“We can see last week, the guys who had that game against Australia, the impact they made indicated they were more used to the pace of the game, the others took a while to get going,” Nienaber said.

The coach was careful not to get carried away even as he admitted to his bitter disappointment with the outcome. “If you look at the Boks, that is a little bit out of character, I don’t think we’ve done that before as much as we did in those 20 minutes.”

While not wanting to appear “soft” about the outcome, Nienaber said that in terms of positive takeaways, the fact that the team gained a foothold and scored more points than the All Blacks in the final hour of the match deserved praise.

“People can say we want a good start, a fast start, but you can’t plan for a good start: you must be accurate, you mustn’t give penalties away and you must have intensity. That’s what we have to sort out between us and the players.”

Nevertheless, Nienaber was getting the answers he needed in terms of having the right game plan and the right players to enforce the strategy. The next few weeks, starting with the Ellis Park match, followed by a trip to Buenos Aires and then two matches against Wales and New Zealand in the UK will allow more opportunities for match time for some of the players. 

Citing the difficult of the Boks’ World Cup pool, which includes Ireland, the no.1 ranked team and Scotland, who the Boks open against in Marseille on September 10, the no.5 ranked team, Nienaber said his side will have to be in play-off mode from the start of the tournament.

“All our pool matches are knockout games and you don’t want to go into a knockout game with players who haven’t played for a month. It will be crucial to strike the right balance in the next four matches,” he said.

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