Boks want to finish with a bang
That was the message from Springbok flyhalf Handré Pollard who scored 15 points from five penalties in his team's 18-20 semifinal loss to New Zealand last Saturday.
"We still got one more game to go and it is another opportunity to represent the Springboks – it is still an amazing honour," said Pollard.
"We can still go away with the third place but it is not what we came here for.
"Its [third place] still not bad so we going to go out on Friday and just give everything we have. It's the last Test match and we just have to get result.
Flank Willem Alberts, who struggled with injury this year, echoed Pollard's sentiments.
"It's obviously disappointing not going all the way in this World Cup," said Alberts.
"I think that was everybody's dream. We wanted to do well and we wanted to win it and we wanted to make the nation proud.
"We got one more chance this year to pull the Springbok jersey over our heads and all we can do is to go out there and do our best and do it for ourselves and show in the game that we still champions even though we did not win the World Cup.
"It's important to finish strong, but I do think that if you look at our last game we did not play that bad. It was quite a rugby spectacle and if you can take the good things out of that game and continue into the next one, then we will be ready for another great rugby match."
The Springboks put in a gutsy performance against the defending champions in torrid conditions at Twickenham and Pollard believes the All Blacks beat them at their own game.
"We did not have the possession or territory that we would have liked. Hats off to New Zealand, I think they played that game very smartly with those little kicks in behind.
"We struggled to get the ball in our hands. They just played a suffocating and strangling game and that's probably the game that we tried to play most of the time – and being the quality side that they are, they adapted to the conditions very well and kept us under pressure.
"We still could have won that game if we had just taken all our opportunities. It's not nice looking back at it now,' Pollard added.
Pollard also believes the experience of playing in the World Cup will put some of the youngsters in good stead for the future, including himself.
"The whole thing we've gone through after losing to Japan and the pressure we have been under – some of the senior players said it a few times that it's something they never experienced in their whole career and they finishing up now and we are just at the beginning of ours.
"We going to take what we can out of this and hopefully it can help us with our careers going forward.
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