VIDEO: All Black loss has not changed 'big picture' for Boks
NEWS: South Africa’s loss to New Zealand will not impact the team selection for the Rugby Championship finale against Argentina.
Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber confirmed that this – team section for Los Pumas – was communicated to the squad ahead of the Rugby Championship Test match against Australia a fortnight ago.
Nienaber made this revelation to the media at the team hotel in Pretoria.
“The primary objective is to win the Rugby Championship,” the coach said, adding: “[However,] it is not in our hands anymore.
“Australia must basically do us a favour.”
The Bok coach said he was still looking at the ‘big’ picture.
“The main objective was managing the load and trying to give everyone game time to be sharp on the field,” Nienaber explained.
Before the Wallabies Test match the plan was communicated to the players and the performance against the All Blacks did not change that plan.
“The plan will stay the same for the Argentina Test.
“Our main thing is to manage the load between the players in the games that we have available.
“The team that we will select for the Argentina game is the team that we obviously believe will be good enough to beat Argentina.
“Just as we thought the team we selected for New Zealand would be good enough to beat the All Blacks and as we did with the team we selected for Australia.”
In terms of the matches against Australia and New Zealand, Nienaber said from a rugby perspective they got a lot of answers.
(Coach Jacques Nienaber unpacks the plan for the Rugby Championship face-off against Argentina at Ellis Park…)
But in terms of the squad, and selecting and splitting the squad, it was always going to be to stick with their plan.
“A lot of our players, the guys that didn’t make the play-offs in Japan, finished early in April.
“So they haven’t been exposed to any rugby since April.
“So we have to manage that, and it is a little different than Super Rugby in that perspective.
“Super Rugby players, like we did in the past, played right up to two weeks before the start of the Rugby Championship.
“So they are quite battle-hardened, where we are a little bit different because of the United Rugby Championship and our teams are playing in the Northern Hemisphere. We finish a little bit earlier.
“That is why we need to spread the load into getting people back into playing rugby again.”
New Zealand have nine points in a competition reduced to a single round before the World Cup, South Africa has five, Argentina four and Australia one.
To win the tournament, the Springboks need to beat Argentina and collect bonus points and hope the All Blacks suffer a pointless loss to the struggling Wallabies in Melbourne.
