By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
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The Springbok rugby team will embark on a four-day trophy tour to major regional centres from Thursday, SA Rugby announced on Sunday,
The team attended the gala World Rugby Awards ceremony in Paris on Sunday night before leaving France for South Africa on Monday.
The Boks arrive back in South Africa on Tuesday (10.55am) at OR Tambo International Airport and will commence the tour 48 hours later.
The tour will start in Pretoria, Johannesburg and Soweto – concluding at FNB Stadium – on Thursday, 2 November, and take in Cape Town (Friday, 3 November) and Durban (Saturday, 4 November) before concluding in the Eastern Cape (East London) on Sunday, 5 November.
The locations have been selected for population size in the first three instances and because of the Eastern Cape’s rugby significance in the fourth.
Satellite tours to Bloemfontein, Nelson Mandela Bay and other centres will be scheduled for 2024. Such tours following the 2019 victory had to be abandoned because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The route for each tour has been prepared in consultation with the respective local authorities and the South African Police Service.
Route maps and timings will be published at www.springboks.rugby, on SA Rugby’s social media channels and by local authorities in due course.
Meanwhile the local Vodacom United Rugby Championship teams failed to put the icing on the cake for South Africa on a weekend dominated by the Springbok World Cup triumph but there were nonetheless signs of encouragement.
The new season is still at an embryonic stage so no one will be getting too excited about log position, but it is the DHL Stormers who head the table after two rounds as all the other favoured teams have now either lost or drawn or have failed to pick up bonus points they may have been chasing.
Of course, the Stormers were the only South African team playing at home this weekend, and their big win over the Scarlets in Stellenbosch was expected after the Vodacom Bulls hammered the Welsh team at Loftus in the first round. The Emirates Lions came close against an Edinburgh team that was playing under new coach Sean Everitt, formerly of the Sharks, at home for the first time, while the Vodacom Bulls came back strongly to only just be denied by Ulster at the Kingspan Stadium on Sunday night.