Newlands to get Bok ball rolling

 

Having fallen just short of away wins against both Australia and New Zealand, the pressure is on for the Boks to show that they can call the shots against both those rivals on home soil.

 

After these two games Meyer will turn his attention to continuing his unbeaten record in Europe on the year-end tour, a task which would obviously be made that much easier with victories over the Wallabies and All Blacks in the bag.

 

The Bok coach knows that for all the positives that can be drawn from their two fighting performances, any defeat at home will seriously undermine the idea that they are making progress.

 

"I think it could have been much different, we were so close in both games and probably could have won both. It has never happened before that we have won three on the road so it is so close between a great season and an average season.

 

"The important thing for us is that there are still two home games and we have to win these ones if we are going to get momentum. So it depends on the next two games and the end of year tour, if we win all our games then we would have had a superb season and only lost two out of 14," he said.

 

A lesson that was learned in the two defeats in Australasia was that the Bok need to get better at handling wet weather before the World Cup next year, and Meyer says it will be a focus of their preparations.

 

"The one thing that has come out of these two games is that if we want to win the World Cup we have to adapt to wet conditions. We have already made plans that when we have our training camp we need to have two fields – one will be a total wet field with a wet ball because it was an eye-opener that we were so close in both games but we didn't execute," he said.

 

Meyer has made no secret of the fact that he is hoping for some dry conditions at Newlands so his team can show what they have to offer on attack to build on the strides they have made in terms of their set-pieces and defence which were shown up at times in the two games agaianst Argentina.

 

"Defensively I think we have grown a lot, to concede just one try against the All Blacks I think is a great achievement.

 

"Our scrums are much better, we have really made a huge step up there. The line-outs were awesome and our defence was great but the one thing we need to do better is to execute, use our opportunities and look after the ball better," he said.

 

The Bok coach is not happy with the accuracy of their kicking game, and he is hoping that there will be more chances to run at the Wallabies this weekend.

 

"If we kick, we don't really want to kick believe it or not, we have to kick contestables. The All Blacks totally outkicked us, they kicked more than us but they kicked intelligently.

 

"We had a few useless kicks and put ourselves under pressure so we have to play a more all-round game and execute better at home.

 

"Although we were close in our games away from home it was always an arm-wrestle and I would like us to show at home what we can do on attack and keep the ball and play some great rugby like we have shown," he added.

 

Meyer knows that his side need an emphatic performance on Saturday to take some momentum into their big showdown with the All Blacks at Ellis Park next week and beyond. The Bok coach has many critics who believe that he is too conservative, so it will be interesting to see what they can do when giving it a full go on attack.