VIDEO: 'If we don’t win, everyone will say this was the k**kest plan'
SPOTLIGHT: It is not easy to tell assistant coaches to continually chop and change teams when they stand to lose 40 percent of their income when things go awry.
Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber was very forthright in his explanation of the need for the rotation policy, especially if you consider that 40 percent of the coaching staff’s contracts are based on win bonuses.
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“It is not nice to chop and change teams. Remember, our contracts are based on 40 percent win bonuses,” Nienaber said during the writers’ briefing on Saturday ahead of the team’s departure to the United Kingdom.
“So it’s tough to tell an assistant coach we need to build squad depth but we might lose this Test match, which is 40 percent of your salary. We are taking a risk.
“But that is the best for South Africa, for where we are, the squad that we have and that we feel – and we might be wrong – we will actually only be right if we win the World Cup.
“If we don’t win the World Cup, everyone will say this was the k**kest plan in the world,” Nienaber said plainly.
According to him, lessons were learnt from the 2011 World Cup squad, when South Africa got eliminated by Australia in the quarterfinals.
“We learned these lessons in 2011.
“We had a squad of 27 World Cup-winning players. At some stage, only 17 were training.
“Everyone had injuries and some couldn’t train on Mondays and/or Tuesdays. That didn’t work for us back then.”
But Nienaber feels that the core of the team has been established and that very little changes will take place in the next two games, against Wales this weekend and New Zealand the following Friday.
“We will probably chop and change a little bit less in the next two games.
“We need to get combinations now. We haven’t given the team the luxury of building combinations and little micro-units within each other.”
Jaden Hendrikse will most likely get the nod to start at scrumhalf since he hasn’t had a lot of playing time due to the passing of his father last month.
“Jaden needs to get a chance now, rather than Grant [Williams]. We would like to see where Jaden is.
“We have seen him in training, but that’s different. So it would be good to see Jaden in action, if we can, as well as Grant,” Nienaber said.
“I think Faf [de Klerk] also needs more game-time. Cobus [Reinach] was exceptional when he played, especially against Argentina – it was probably the best that he has ever played for the Boks.
“Faf was also brilliant, even against Argentina.”
The coach said Williams was over his concussion sustained in the Test against Argentina at Ellis Park and might even run out at wing in one of the two warm-up games.
