Siya Kolisi: ‘Manie Libbok is my general’ and the ‘most important guy’ in the Springboks team
Siya Kolisi and Mzwandile Stick fiercely defended Manie Libbok.
Springboks captain Siya Kolisi and assistant coach Mzwandile Stick fiercely defended Manie Libbok after his missed kick in the defeat to Argentina.
Libbok missed what would have been a match-winning penalty in round five of the Rugby Championship as Los Pumas clinched a 29-28 victory.
Despite the miss, the playmaker has been backed in the starting XV for the tournament decider in Nelspruit and both Kolisi and Stick backed him to thrive.
“Manie is in a good space”
Stick believes that Libbok is the perfect fit for this weekend’s game, particularly with the fresh bodies that the Springboks have at their disposal.
Rassie Erasmus and his coaching staff opted to leave seven Springboks in South Africa in order to prepare for the final match of the tournament, a decision they hope will pay dividends as they look to combat the pace at which Argentina want to play.
“Manie is in a good space one thing about how we operate as a team – he knows we’ve got his back and we support him 100%,” Stick said ahead of the clash.
“This week he has Manie Libbok, the Manie who brings energy into the team. That’s one thing that people sometimes don’t realise about him and the impact that he has on our general play. I know a lot of people focus on his goal-kicking but the impact that he brings with the ball in hand, he is very is a special kid.
“If you look at the way we selected the team, I think we’ve got the guys that will feel nice and fresh and be able to handle Argentina’s speed.
“A lot of their players have a sevens background and they have selected Rodrigo Isgro – a World SVNS Series Player of the Year – and what Manie offers us should be able to counter whatever they bring.
“Even a guy like Jaden Hendrikse who is getting an opportunity to start and he has been with us for a couple of years – we know he has a bright future. Getting Damian [de Allende] back and those guys who were rested last week too.”
Siya Kolisi’s “passionate defence”
Meanwhile, Kolisi issued a passionate defence of Libbok and said that the team looked at the defeat with a more holistic view rather than just the single missed kick.
He went on to explain why the fly-half was so crucial to the team.
“I talk to Manie all the time, he’s my general. He’s the most important guy in our team when we are talking about our attacking or kicking game,” he said.
“He knows that every single guy in the team is backing him and you see that with the selection, he’s playing again this weekend and we know what Manie is good at and that’s all we focused on.
“You can look at the kick and think that’s where the game was lost but we looked at the game and we saw so many opportunities that we left on the field. It could be a missed tackle and they scored a try – so that’s how we look at the game, we don’t look at one moment. There are so many moments in a game where it could be won.
“All I told him that he must tell me when we must go for touch when we want to maul, when we want to scrum and he must just do what he does.
“He’s walking with confidence, he’s put it behind him and all the coaches are asking is for him to just do what you do and what you can’t do somebody else can do it. That’s why we play team sport, that’s the beauty of rugby, you know if you are lacking somewhere somebody else will look after you.
“I’m not worried about him and the group is not worried about him, he definitely knows I back him 100%.”
“We’ve got a plan in place”
Head coach Erasmus said that the Boks have a plan to ease the pressure off Libbok when it comes to kicking for goal and Stick reiterated that fact.
“We’ve got a plan in place and I’m not going to go too deep on it but we’ve got a plan and like Siya said, if a player is lacking something somewhere, someone else can make it up,” Stick explained.
“There’s no rule in the game that the number 10 must always kick for poles, so whoever on a day we feel can do the job for us – it can be a prop, if he can kick for poles then we ask a prop to kick for poles.
“But Manie will always be our general, yes we had an opportunity to win the game with a kick but there were a lot of things that we did wrong and we shouldn’t have even been in that situation where it was a close game.
“Within 15 minutes, we got 17 points and then the yellow card came in and Argentina started to capitalise, there were a lot of things that we looked at as a coaching staff and a lot of things that we saw in that game are things we spoke about even before the match.
“Argentina they are a good side and we knew the challenge. For that 10 minutes when we had a yellow card, they understood what needed to be done at that time and they capitalised on it.
“We’ve got an opportunity to rectify everything that we did wrong last week and you can’t ask for a better place than Mbombela.”
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