Boks provide update on flyer's brutal blow

REACTION: While Zekhethelo Siyaya’s injury was a big blow, coach Mzwandile Stick was pleased with how a young SA ‘A’ side stood up in their blanking of Zimbabwe in Gqeberha on Saturday.

Siyaya left the field visibly dazed before being stretchered off from the side of the pitch after taking a teammate’s leg to the head in the 35th minute in the curtain-raiser against Zimbabwe.

With the World Rugby Under-20 Championship set to kick off on June 27, the exciting back is now in a race against time to be ready for the Junior Boks.

Stick confirmed that Siyaya sustained a concussion, while he praised flyhalf Yaqeen Ahmed for how he went against the Sables before leaving the field late in the third quarter with a yellow card for a dangerous tackle, which was upgraded to red.

“When it comes to Siyaya and what happened to him, it was actually against his teammate. He lost some network there, so even after the game, he was still not sure where he was. But he’s still alive, he’s moving. He is still in Disneyland, though.

“With Yaqeen’s red card…we respect the match official’s calls. A young kid got it wrong. We try to keep the game clean, and taking a man out in the air is one of the things we don’t want in our setup.

“He’s also OK, and I think the time he was on the field you could see the brilliant touches that he has. He is only 19; he was in school last year, so from my side, it was disappointing for us to have those cards, but they’re still young, they’re going to learn what life is all about.

“As long as we keep learning from our mistakes and we keep getting better.

“Yaqeen is going to the Junior World Cup, so I wish him all the best, and hopefully Siyaya can also recover quickly to go and represent us.”

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The Springboks assistant coach was mostly pleased with what his team delivered in the match he hoped they would play “like a Test match”.

“We knew it was going to be a big challenge because the majority of our team hadn’t played together. It was a new team. Zimbabwe also tried to give us challenges; they kept ball in hand and that’s one of the things I enjoyed most about them.

“For me, the goal was to see if the players can almost like play Test-match rugby, during practice, the first few weeks were all about control and balance to see if our game drivers could control the game, so that’s why it is at times frustrating when you’re not getting the points, you know.

“There were two times in the first half where we were just unlucky – the first time the player went into touch, and then the second time a player was in front of the kicker, so that didn’t show on the scoreboard.”

Stick singled out the performance of fullback Luan Giliomee, and for good reason.

While there were a number of pleasing performances, Giliomee certainly comes in at the very top of that list with immaculate work under the high ball and a superb kicking game.

He was also a perfect fit on attack, and he looked so comfortable at that level that overall, you’d easily mistake him for a seasoned senior campaigner.

“From my side, the way the guys stayed in the fight even when we were under pressure was good. There were times Zim got into our 22 and applied pressure on us, but we managed to keep a clean sheet.

“There are a couple of youngsters that took their opportunity, it’s not only about what happened in the game, we wanted to see if they would be able to handle the load and how we operate in the Springbok team and some of them did very well to put their hand up, especially Luan, you could see that Sevens background and that he has confidence in what he does.

“He’s also a local boy from the Eastern Cape, and Jaco Williams, I feel that he also did very well. We had some disappointing moments as a team, but I am still happy with what we did and how we managed to keep a clean sheet.”

Stick added that it was good to see how the youngsters went as a team after the training camp in Johannesburg ahead of the double-header in the Eastern Cape.

“I think it was good for the players who joined our system for the first time. We had two weeks in Joburg and that is never easy, even when you try to do something in the gym, you struggle, but we really pushed them hard in camp and the lot of the youngsters started to hold back where they get nervous around the older guys, but we tried to empower them to be themselves and we saw some of those brilliant moments today [Saturday].

“We may not have played the best rugby out there, but you could see some of them were looking for those opportunities. Mentally and physically, we were up there; the forwards were challenged, but some of our forwards stuck out there. They should be proud of it.”