The Springboks have arrived in Buenos Aires knowing that Saturday’s return Rugby Championship game against Argentina will be even tougher than the Nelspruit clash.
South Africa touched down in Buenos Aires in the early hours of Tuesday morning SA time after leaving Johannesburg 16 hours earlier on Monday, and will remain in the capital city until Friday, when they take a two-hour flight to Salta for Saturday’s Test.
The Boks travelled via Sao Paulo in Brazil, where they bumped into 800m Olympic champion Caster Semenya and 5 000m finalist Elroy Gelant at the airport, with SA Rugby posting a photo of the two athletes with flyhalf Elton Jantjies, centre Juan de Jongh and scrumhalf Rudy Paige on Twitter.
Semenya and Gelant were on their way back home with Team SA and were welcomed by a huge crowd at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on Tuesday morning.
But while Jantjies said upon arrival that it was a safe flight, the Boks are determined to cut out the errors that saw Los Pumas nearly pull off a shock victory at the Mbombela Stadium at the weekend.
No 8 Warren Whiteley scored the winning try in the last minute to secure a 30-23 triumph.
“Feeling good. Glad that we are at the hotel. We had a safe flight. It was quite an enjoyable flight, the boys really enjoyed it, especially after the win. And then we chilled a bit in Brazil and met some of the Olympic guys as well,” Jantjies told SuperSport TV on arrival in Buenos Aires on Tuesday.
“They played with really good intensity against us in Nelspruit – we made a few mistakes and they capitalised on it. So, it’s up to us to limit those mistakes and not make the same mistakes again. For us, it’s just about improving. That’s the biggest point for us, building that continuity within the group. Hopefully we can have a good one on Saturday.”
Saturday’s match kicks off at 9.40pm SA time and the referee will be Frenchman Jerome Garces. Bok coach Allister Coetzee is unlikely to make many changes, with the only enforced newcomer in the starting line-up being Vincent Koch, who will come in for Julian Redelinghuys at tighthead prop. Redelinghuys pulled a hamstring in the 30th minute in Nelspruit and has been ruled out for between three and six weeks.
One of Trevor Nyakane and Lourens Adriaanse will come on to the bench as a back-up tighthead to Koch.
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