Boks go back to business
While New Zealand and Australia prepared for their dead-rubber Bledisloe Cup match, the Springboks enjoyed some rest before being put through their paces in Stellenbosch on Monday.
The training camp forms part of the year-end tour preparations and captain Jean de Villiers was in a jovial mood after an intense session in the blistering Winelands heat.
"It (the training) was exactly what I was expecting. There's always a great atmosphere when the Boks come together. Everyone is excited and we always expect a hard training session when we get together.
"After the session we had, the time off was a little too nice. It's good to get away from the game a little and get a chance to mentally recharge. Considering the stage of the year we find ourselves in, two weeks was enough down time," he said.
De Villiers believes it's vital to have this camp in the lead-up to the year-end tour as it provides an ideal opportunity to iron out any wrinkles.
"It's a situation we haven't been in for a long time, we can actually prepare the detail and work on conditioning at this stage of the season which will hopefully lead to a good end-of-year tour.
"This is vital for the year-end tour and the detail we can get out of it is very important. The effect will most probably only seen after the tour this year. In the bigger picture, looking toward next year, it's important to get a rest somewhere, which we had, and we will really know the difference it (the break) made after the November Tests," he added.
The Springboks achieved their goal of beating the All Blacks when they defeated the world number one side 27-25 in their final Rugby Championship match but De Villiers stated the game was far from perfect.
"It was always one of our big goals (to beat New Zealand) and it was one of the boxes we haven't ticked yet [until now]. We always believed we were good enough to beat them and we proved it. We really played well in both matches [against them] and it's a positive step we have taken but the next goal is to play well in the next game.
"We had a review of the last game, regarding our attacking abilities which became the main focus of training with some conditioning thrown in and there were a lot of positives. We made a lot of mistakes and we are trying to improve every time we play.
"We need to constantly show improvement in every facet of the game, just because we beat them [New Zealand], it doesn't mean we played the perfect game, far from it. We still need to improve a lot to be successful in the November Tour," he stated.
By Tauriq Ebrahim
@Tagels03
