‘Springboks still have room for improvement’ – Mzwandile Stick

South Africa will head to New Zealand on Sunday in a confident mood after opening their Rugby Championship campaign with an emphatic 43-12 victory over Australia in Pretoria on Saturday.

The result at Loftus Versfeld was the Springboks’ third biggest victory over Australia in 93 meetings between the teams.

Hoping to build on win over Wallabies

While Bok assistant coach Mzwandile Stick said the team’s performance was one which they desired and was hoping to build on, he also admitted that there was room for improvement.

“It gave us a good foundation,” he said. “The Australian side were physical, they gave us a lot of challenges in the game, but when the opportunities came the players had a full go at them.

“There’s a lot of things we can improve on, but we’ll take the result any day. If you had said in the week that we’d have scored 43 points against Australia, we’d have said you were dreaming. But we have something to work on.”

Stick identified finishing as one of those areas which has to be improved on.

“There was a point in the game where we had a lot of entries into Australian 22 and we didn’t convert – and there were couple of line breaks as well – and I think that’s where we need to keep on improving,” he said. “We have to make sure we convert those into points – when we play against the All Blacks and Argentina, we’re not going to get ten opportunities; we’re only get four or five and you need to convert them.”

He also feels that the style of play against Australia did not represent a change in approach so much as an evolution for the Boks.

“We don’t call it expansive, like we have always said, if we create opportunities the guys have the freedom to exploit them,” said Stick. “We were just happy with how we executed our game plan and once again if it wasn’t for the way we defended early in the game those opportunities wouldn’t have come later.

“The most important thing for us is to keep improving as a team. It’s a World Cup year and everyone is focusing on it, but we want to make sure we keep building and to have a start like this – even though there is a lot of room for improvement – is something we can work on.

“We’re really happy with the manner in which we won this game because Australia came and they were physical – but credit to the our players they played for 80 minutes.”

Meanwhile, veteran number eight Duane Vermeulen, who was the Boks‘ stand-in captain against the Wallabies, couldn’t hide his delight as he reflected on the performance.

“It was a special performance and it’s a special group of guys,” said the 37-year-old. “It’s not just the players, it’s the coaches and the management – everyone – someday it will all come to an end and you know you’ve just got to enjoy every single minute and second of it.

“Australia fetched a big pack and we are still a bit rusty with things we can work on – scrum wise with a couple of free kicks and penalty against us – but later on as we went on in the game we found our feet and we grew really in confidence. That’s some of the things we are happy about, but it’s test match rugby and you’ve got to be on song from the start and you can’t ease into the game.”

Vermeulen paid tribute to the 50 000-strong Loftus Versfeld crowd and said he hoped the Boks’ send off at the end of the month against Argentina at Emirates Airline Park would be similarly inspiring.

“It was fantastic coming out seeing the support,” he said, “from singing the anthem onwards and every single player at every scrum, lineout we could hear the people and it’s that extra energy and like having a 16th man on the field – it really pushed us through.

“Before we go to the World Cup when we play our last match at Emirates Airline Park, it would be tremendous to have a full stadium again. We had a chat to the CEO of the Bulls and he said they could have sold out the stadium about three times for today’s test.

“The support we have in South Africa is phenomenal and from our side we’d just like to say ‘thank you’ to every single person who was out there – it really is fantastic.”

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