By Gavin Rich.
The modern Springboks do not have the advantage that the first World Cup winning team from this country had back in 1995, or for that matter in 2007.
In both those years, there was a strong representation within the squad from one or two dominant unions or franchises. When Francois Pienaar’s team won in 1995, the majority of the team was made up of Transvaal players who’d played under the national coach, Kitch Christie, for the provincial team. And in 2007, when Jake White’s team captained by John Smit won in France, there was an equal divide between that year’s Super Rugby finalists, the Bulls and the Sharks.
With some key combinations playing together outside of the international season, there might back then have been less need for the alignment camps that have become the modern way under the direction of national director of rugby Rassie Erasmus and Bok coach Jacques Nienaber. But now, by Nienaber’s count, the national squad is drawn from no less than 25 different clubs/provinces.
And getting the players from so many disparate rugby entities and different cultures onto the same page is one of the main emphasises of the national training camps that started with what Neinaber referred to as “mini-camps” in Durban over the past three weeks and which have now morphed into the preparation camp currently being held in Pretoria ahead of the Castle Lager Rugby Championship.
“The majority of the players have been with us post Covid, if you can call it that, in other words since 2021,” said Neinaber.
“It is always a major challenge when you get all the guys together again. We have guys from 25 different clubs and we have to get them aligned. It is a challenge to get everyone thinking the same way again. But while that is a negative, the positive is the IP you get from all the different clubs that are represented in our squad.”
Nienaber and Erasmus do draw on the knowledge that players who play for teams in Japan, Ireland, England and France bring back through the experience they pick up playing for coaches who have different approaches to those in South Africa and with players who have different backgrounds and outlooks.
Nienaber believes everything is on track when it comes to the alignment of ideas and approach that is the main focus at this stage of the build-up to first the Rugby Championship and then, flowing on from that, the World Cup preparation games and then the World Cup itself.
“At the moment it is all about preparation for the Rugby Championship first and foremost and then it will flow from there into the warmup games we have planned,” said Nienaber.
“The difference between this camp, the one in Pretoria, and the previous ones we staged in Durban, what I’d call mini-camps, is that the Durban camps were all about just getting guys who were not involved in knockout rugby for their clubs a chance to get some conditioning and rugby into their bodies.
‘If we hadn’t staged the mini-camps in Durban our Japanese guys would have been without rugby for six weeks now. Durban was an opportunity to get some rugby into those players’ bodies, to get them physically ticking over. There were only nine players in the first mini camp, so the focus was just on some fundamentals and on conditioning.
“For the second mini camp we had more players and now we have grown to the extent that we almost have two teams that can train against each other. So from a rugby viewpoint it is easier to prepare tactically now, we can go into the tactical part of our preparation in the time that remains before we start the Rugby Championship season against Australia.”
Nienaber said that while the World Cup would be the highlight of the year, he and his fellow coaches were taking a similar approach to when they built up to the 2019 World Cup in Japan – in other words dealing with each challenge separately and as it comes.
“The World Cup is the big one this year but the first emphasis is on Australia. The plan we are working on now is the one we set out for the Rugby Championship. From there we will go into the three warmup games, with the second clash with Argentina, the one that does not form part of the Rugby Championship, being our first of our three match warmup.”
Castle Lager Rugby Championship:
Saturday, 8 July – Springboks v Australia (Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria)
Saturday, 15 July – Springboks v New Zealand (Mount Smart Stadium, Auckland)
Saturday, 29 July – Springboks v Argentina (Emirates Airline Park, Johannesburg)
RWC warm-up fixtures:
Saturday, 5 August – Springboks v Argentina (Velez Sarsfield, Buenos Aires)
Saturday, 19 August – Springboks v Wales (Principality Stadium, Cardiff)
Friday, 25 August – Springboks v New Zealand (Twickenham, London).