Jacques Nienaber: Springboks have owned the ‘world champion’ tag after shaking off underdog mentality
Pieter-Steph du Toit and an inset of ex-Springboks coach Jacques Nienaber.
Ex-Springboks head coach Jacques Nienaber believes that Rassie Erasmus’ men have learnt to embrace the world champions tag, having previously sought after the underdog mentality.
When Erasmus and Nienaber returned to South Africa in 2018, they took over a team low on confidence and on the World Rugby rankings.
The pair masterminded the turnaround in fortunes, but they still entered the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan as underdogs, a tag that Springbok teams have thrived with over the years.
That success came four years earlier than Erasmus and Nienaber expected, as they initially targeted winning the 2023 World Cup when they took over the reins.
Failure’s role in evolution
Speaking to SuperSport’s Matthew Pearce, Nienaber was asked about the Springboks coaching team’s high tolerance for failure during his tenure, which has continued since his departure.
“It’s something that we started when the Boks won the World Cup in 2019,” he began.
“Before then, none of us were world champions; in the group, only Frans Steyn had been there in 2007, so he was actually the only one who understood what being a champion was like.
“On the failure and evolution part, once we became the champions, the big thing is if you don’t evolve and improve yourself and find new ways or better ways of doing things, the teams that are chasing you, they just do a gap analysis on you and look at where your KPIs are and where they are lacking and then they know where to focus on to catch up with you and eventually they will overtake you.
“So for us it was important to keep on evolving and changing, but what we did do and what I didn’t expect was that with the evolution, you are chasing stretch goals; it’s goals that you actually don’t know if you will be able to reach them, and sometimes you fail.”
‘I miss the Springboks’ – Jacques Nienaber addresses future beyond Leinster
Mindset shift
The now-Leinster senior coach explained that is a crucial part of being a champion, the ability to accept that failure and continually explore new ways of doing things.
He also noted how the team is dealing with the pressure of heading into Test matches as the favourites.
“So that’s the other mindset of being a champion. You must be comfortable with the uncomfortable, and the uncomfortable part is the fact that you might fail sometimes, but you are chasing goals that have never been there before. You’re venturing into the unknown,” he continued.
“That was a mental challenge for us. It was a big challenge moving from an underdog mentality going into the 2019 World Cup to going into the 2023 World Cup, changing our mindset from being an underdog to accepting and embracing being a champion.
“It’s fascinating to see the squad now, how much they’ve embraced it, and how much the squad has grown in terms of that. It’s not a foreign concept, and without being arrogant, when I say they’ve really owned the world champion tag. But not in an arrogant way, they’re humble.
“It’s fascinating to see them grow from afar, because I’m also a spectator now.”
