Western Province on course with 'plan'

REACTION: Western Province assistant coach Rito Hlungwani took the positives from his side’s latest defeat in the Currie Cup to the Sharks at Cape Town Stadium.

Hlungwani expressed his disappointment 23-31 loss but provided context in terms of his side’s experience.

“I think the boys fought really hard, they tried their best.

Like I said in the week, half our team was sort of Under-21, they never sort of disappeared and that’s what you expect of a young-ish team.”

When asked if things aren’t looking good at Western Province in terms of performance, Hlungwani gave an honest assessment of his view on the subject.

“We got a goal, we had a plan, we’re really excited about the future of the province. We’re really excited about the amount of talent coming through,”

He added: “Kyle Smith – he’s U19 and he’s playing Currie Cup, Gino Cupido is U19 and he’s playing Currie Cup. Joel [Leotlela] played SA U20s, he played Currie Cup today [Saturday].

“Our pack today, we probably just had two guys that are over 21, that’s Scarra [Ntubeni] and Willie [Engelbrecht]. The rest of the guys are pretty much still under 21.

“We’re happy with the progress of these young guys and we want to keep pushing them and getting them ready for big rugby.”

Hlungwani made no secret that Western Province made a decision before the competition started that they would use the Currie Cup as a development competition.

“We made it clear from the start of the competition, this is what the campaign is going to be used for – we’re going to blood in the guys that haven’t played much in the URC and unfortunately a lot of them got injured, but there’s a lot of youngsters we’re really happy about.”

He added: “We’re not going to probably go and step out and try and go buy a lot of players when we have a lot of talent we can groom ourselves and get them ready for URC.”

Hlungwani held his cards close to his chest on the possibility of the URC players featuring in the match against the Pumas in Stellenbosch next week.

“Sooner or later we do have a plan with our URC guys.

“URC is not too far away, our guys need to start getting game time.

“I can’t tell you exactly how many guys we’ll be playing but that’s the process going forward.

“They’ll have to start coming in and getting them ready because this is usually the time we start playing friendly matches if there was no Currie Cup.”

When asked by @rugby365com if the goal was still to make the Currie Cup play-offs with a mathematical chance or if it’s all about developing the younger players, Hlungwani confirmed that they’ll stick to their guns.

“I think that goal was always to develop the players from the start, like I said it would be nice to win today.

“It would be nice to make the play-offs, but we’re not shifting our goal-posts as we go – this is the idea we had in the beginning and this is the idea we’re sticking to.”

Hlungwani also provided insight into the late changes Western Province made before the match.

“Angelo [Davids] we were hoping he’d be ready this week, so we held him until the last minute. Unfortunately, JC Mars got injured in captains [run] and Joshua Boulle was sick this morning.

“He still came in, he tried to do the warm-up but the doctor felt that it was not safe to let him play.

So it wasn’t like things we could control, but like I said, these boys fought.

“Gino came in this [Saturday] morning… Kyle Smith came in this morning and the positive thing is that these guys train with the senior team so when they got called they quickly jumped at it

“They train with the senior team, they fitted in nicely, they understand the defence system because Norman [Laker] has been coaching them.

“It wasn’t a big shock for them, but they came in and slotted in nicely.”