Cardiff - Sink or swim - almost literally, given the expected inclement conditions. That is the message Heyneke Meyer has given to his 32-man Springbok squad for the November tour matches against Wales, Scotland and France as he gauges which players will be able to cut it in the mud, cold and wet that will be the backdrop for the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England.
The nine matches the Boks have played this year have all been on dry, fast pitches, but Meyer said in the Welsh capital on Monday that it required greater mental strength for players to stick it out in the tough conditions of the northern hemisphere, and he wants to sort the wheat out from the chaff now that the World Cup is just two years away.
Meyer said that in the interests of momentum and continuity he will pick more or less the same team that played New Zealand in the final Rugby Championship match for the tour opener against Wales, but there would be fresh blood off the bench, and then he will give starts to new faces next week against Scotland.
“I do not regard this as an ‘end-of-year’ tour but rather a new start in the quest to see which players are up to playing at the required level in difficult conditions against three tough teams,” Meyer said. “I have always said that as coach of the Springboks the most important thing to me is to win every single Test match, but at some stage you have to have an eye on the Rugby World Cup, which is undoubtedly the highlight of the four-year cycle.”
Meyer said that the first two years of his job were about picking players to win the Test matches in front of the Boks each weekend but now that the countdown to the World Cup is at the half-way mark, he cannot rely on the team evolving on its own. “You cannot just hope that the team takes care of itself over the four years. At some stage, you have to put things into place, and that time is now,” Meyer said. “It is a bit of a Catch 22 for this tour - you either stick with all the experienced players and win all three Tests, and you are happy, but in the World Cup you then find you are not well prepared in terms of your depth.
“You have to evaluate guys in Test matches - it is easy to look good in training,” Meyer said. “So I am going to give opportunities to untested players on this tour. That does not mean I underestimate the opposition because I would not have picked guys for this tour that I did not believe can play at this level. You don’t want to come away from a tour two years from the World Cup not having learned anything. You rather want to see now who can’t make it.”
Meyer pointed out that this time last year he learned a lot on the tour, and a number of players that did duty last November have not been picked again, including Juandré Kruger, Heinke van der Merwe and CJ van der Linde.
“Other guys from that tour have grown stronger,” Meyer said. “Whatever happens against Wales this week, we are going to give others a chance against Scotland, so by the end of the tour in Paris we will know exactly where we stand and will be closer to around 25 of the 30 that goes to the World Cup.”
In changes to the team that played so well against the All Blacks at Ellis Park, Meyer is set to bring back veteran backline Boks in wing JP Pietersen (for Willie le Roux) and centre Jaque Fourie (for JJ Engelbrecht); and in the pack, Flip van der Merwe for Kruger and uncapped Lourens Adriaanse for injured tighthead Jannie du Plessis.
Meyer intimated that it was still early in the process of converting Cheetahs loosehead Coenie Oosthuizen to tighthead, and that bright young thing Pieter-Steph du Toit would be blooded off the bench at No 5 lock and then would start against Scotland.
“Pieter-Steph has been part of my plans since he was 19 and has been included in our squads so that he could learn, but it is a bit much to give him the responsibility of running the lineouts, which goes with the territory for a No 5 lock, in his first Test.”
Cape Times