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'We weren't perfect': Springboks want to find 'A-game' ahead of All Black challenge
By Rugby365
The Springboks could be in for a big shock if they don’t lift their performance levels for their upcoming Rugby Championship matches against the All Blacks.
The Boks are coming off a 2-1 series victory over Wales, while the All Blacks are reeling after their historic 1-2 series defeat to Ireland.
Despite the Springboks’ success, there are still some doubts around Jacques Nienaber’s game plan with many fans and pundits calling it “boring” and “outdated”.
Nienaber admits that his team is far from the finished product and that they will have to lift their game for an All Blacks team looking to right the wrongs.
“Our goal is to improve,” said Nienaber.
“When we faced Wales, we hadn’t played together as a team for a while, so that served as a marker for where we are.
“I think the main thing for us is to fix things in our game. We weren’t perfect against Wales.
“There is a lot of stuff that we have to work on and that we have to improve on.
“We had a nice review on Monday and we had a reality check on where we are currently.
“We have to look at what goals we set in the Wales series and where we excelled.
“In some instances we thought we actually showed some good growth and then in other instances, we didn’t show as much growth as we thought we would have.”
Meanwhile, Springbok centre Lukhanyo Am agrees that his team will need to find something extra to beat New Zealand in Nelspruit and Johannesburg.
“They [All Blacks] are one of the teams where you have to be on your A-game all the time,” said Am.
“As a team, we have tried preparing as much as we can.
“We all know that we will be facing a different threat compared to Wales.
“We are busy doing our prep and we trust that will put us in a better place for the Test next week.”
-Warren Fortune/Rugby365
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Latest Comments
Agree, the team isn't really in transition anymore, that happened very early, and looks to have been completed by the Argentina loss, that they fixed the cause of that Foster type result and it didn't happen again.
Disagree with how you want to lock in the team like this. As Cantab suggests the real way this team is going to move forward now is by maximising the talent, and there are plenty of other ways the forward pack could potential be improved, so it is going to need some creative and ingenuitive coaching if ABs are going to prove good enough anymore.
Go to commentsBecause Robertson is allergic to risk-taking. Perofeta and Plummer were never once trialled at First Five-Eight, Beauden was kept at Fullback for like half the season despite having close to ten players over the year who can play that position.
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