Brisbane – Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer does not believe his players are fit enough to win the World Cup and there is going to be a huge focus on conditioning over the two months remaining before the Boks play their first Pool game in England.
Meyer did not blame fitness for his team’s loss against the Wallabies at the weekend – he laid that excuse at the door of inexperience in the second half and on the fickleness of fate that saw referee Nigel Owens blow a dubious penalty for a ruck infringement and then a TMO decision that could have gone either way, and ended up giving the Wallabies a heroic come-from-behind victory after they had been trailing 20-7 with 20 minutes to go.
“All in all I believe we are on track for the World Cup,” Meyer said. “There are obviously injury concerns over some key players but that is out of the hands of the coaching staff and what will be will be,” he fatalistically said of whether the likes of Duane Vermeulen, Jean de Villiers, Willem Alberts, Fourie du Preez, Pieter-Steph du Toit and Jaque Fourie make it to England.
“One thing we can change is our fitness. We started working really hard on it in that two weeks before the World XV game and the players can expect to do a whole lot more sweating in the training camps that are coming up (in Durban and Johannesburg),” the coach said. “I don’t think Bok teams I have had before have been at optimum fitness. This is a controllable, and we will make sure we are fit to go the distance when it counts in those big World Cup games.”
It was put to Meyer after the game at the Suncorp Stadium that his players lacked mental toughness after the Boks fell apart in the face of a desperate Wallabies onslaught in the final quarter.
“That had nothing to do with it. Schalk Burger was leading the team at that stage and they don’t come mentally tougher than that,” Meyer emphatically said. “I recall the same Springbok team that won the 2007 World Cup the year before had got beaten 49-0 in Brisbane.
“We played against the most experienced Wallabies side ever (in terms of total Test caps),” Meyer pointed out. “If we had got that TMO decision, or kicked the ball out 30 seconds before instead of trying to keep the ball and wind the clock down, we would be talking about a famous victory. That is the reality of Test rugby. It can come down to 30 seconds each way being the difference between being heroes and losers.”
Meyer grew passionate in defending his players against a suggestion they had choked when the going got tough.
“That was never the case. I thought all of our newcomers showed toughness. What a game Jessie Kriel played, also Damian (de Allende) alongside him, and I thought Handré Pollard grew in confidence from the World XV. He made a few mistakes (including dropping the ball with the tryline in front of him) but he took a big step up in his goal kicking and he was strong in defence in a channel that they attacked.”
But Meyer did highlight the loss of Victor Matfield to a hamstring injury in the 18th minute as crucial.
“Experience was a problem in that last quarter,” he said. “If Victor had been there at the end we might not have lost that game. We struggled to get momentum in the second half, we had no ball in the last 30 minutes, we lost a few line-outs we should not have and conceded a few penalties that were avoidable.
“But there many positives. We had fledglings at 10, 12 and 13 against an axis of Will Genia, Quade Cooper, Matt Giteau and Tevit Kuridrani, some of the cleverest and most experienced backs in world rugby. I was worried about our first phase defence against those wily guys and knew they would test us with planned moves. But the guys held the line (apart from when blind side wing Adam Ashley-Cooper took an inside ball from Giteau from line-out ball to carve through for the Wallabies’ first try).
The Boks last night flew home from Australia on the same plane as the All Blacks, their foes on Saturday at Ellis Park.
The Star