VIDEO: Cheetahs 'sharpening their pencils' for big freeze in Amsterdam
Going from a scorching hot mid-summer Bloemfontein to a snow-covered Amsterdam is not going to curtail the Cheetahs’ enthusiasm for their mission.
“A bunch of Free State guys playing with snow is always fun,” Cheetahs coach and Springbok legend Frans Steyn said of his team’s Challenge Cup Round Three face-off with Ulster.
But tough conditions or not, the men from Bloemfontein have a job to do against Ulster at the National Rugby Centre Amsterdam.
They trained with ‘wet’ balls in their build-up back in Bloemfontein.
Now it is all about the mental preparation, getting in the right frame of mind and executing on the day.
Steyn pointed out that Ulster is in good form, sitting third in the URC and well-placed in the Challenge Cup’s with a 61-7 hammering of Racing 92 and a surprise (26-29) loss to Cardiff.
The coach added that the challenge is to suppress their natural urges to be expansive and avoid ‘overplaying’ in the tough European conditions, being tactically astute against a team familiar with the harsh European winters.
“Their pressure game is top-shelf,” Steyn said, adding: “They force errors and if you play in the wrong areas, they feed off those mistakes.”
The Cheetahs’ biggest challenge is that they have not played since the Round Two loss to Stade Français on December 13, while Ulster was active in the URC.
“It would have been beneficial to play tough games week-in and week-out,” he told @JanDKrugby.
“I won’t use that as an excuse.
“We have a massive opportunity, and we need to be better than our two previous matches,” he said of the losses to Exeter Chiefs (12-42) and Stade Français (22-45).
* (Article continues below ….)
;
The quality of their pool opposition is also of the highest calibre, with Exeter third in the Premiership, Stade Français third in the Top 14 and Ulster third in the URC.
“In the previous two games, we just made too many costly errors.
“If we can sort that out, we have some great players and a good squad.
“We must not wait for something to happen; we must go and make it happen.”
Steyn said they have completed their training at home and will just have a light ‘jog through’ in Amsterdam, working on getting all the players on the same page.
“We come out of a hot summer, where it is easy to throw the ball around in Bloemfontein, so getting everybody in the same frame of mind is the big challenge.
“It is all about ‘sharpening the pencil’ at the moment,” Steyn added.
@JanDKrugby
@rugby365com
