VIDEO: 'You can't fake confidence'
WATCH as Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus reveals his goals for South Africa’s Rugby Championship campaign.
The often-used maxim states that ‘Winning is a habit, but so is losing.’
That is why the Bok coach feels that winning now is important to the team’s World Cup cause.
“You can’t fake confidence,” Erasmus told a media gathering, adding: “You build confidence.
“[A] lot of people talk confidence, but you get confidence through winning.”
He spoke of last year, when they lost to Argentina and Australia in the Rugby Championship, but regained some confidence by beating New Zealand in Wellington.
Similarly, they lost confidence by losing to England in the first match on the year-end tour, but regained some confidence by beating France and Scotland.
Unfortunately, they then lost again to Wales.
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“We have to build confidence going into the World Cup,” the coach said.
“Going into the Australia Test we will field a few new combinations,” he said of the team’s opening match of the Rugby Championship, at Ellis Park on July 20.
“I want the players to express themselves, have a full go, use their talent.
“However, I don’t want them to [feel they] have this gun against the head.
“That is my job, to create that culture in the team.
“The objective is to try and win the Rugby Championship, build confidence, play the best team against Japan [warm-up match before the World Cup] and two weeks later play our best team against New Zealand [in the opening round of the World Cup].”
The Boks get their 2019 campaign underway against the Wallabies in Johannesburg on July 20, followed a week later by the highly-anticipated encounter with the All Blacks in Wellington.
They conclude their official campaign against Argentina in Salta two weeks later (Saturday, August 10).
The Boks and Pumas have a pre-World Cup once-off international in Pretoria a week later, August 17.
@rugby365com
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