Bok coaches eye World Cup opponents

The World Cup is around the corner and the Springboks will name their 31-man squad for the global showpiece on Friday night. While head coach, Heyneke Meyer, will have had some sleepless nights mulling over who will go and who will stay, his right-hand men have done their best to prepare the side for their six-week trip to the United Kingdom.

Much has been made of the tough Northern Hemisphere conditions in the past, but the general consensus in the Bok camp is that the weather should have minimal impact. The focus has been on the Boks' four different opponents in Pool B – Japan, USA, Scotland and Samoa.

The old rugby cliché ‘it all starts upfront’ will come to the fore up north and De Villiers believes a number of teams offer completely different challenges at scrum-time.

“In terms of stats in the past two years I think Ireland has been up there. New Zealand are very good on their own ball, Argentina have been very good on opposition ball, while we are also up there which is good to know,” De Villiers said.

“All of the top teams will be solid, England are always good, France are always a powerful scrumming side, New Zealand are a very balanced side, not necessarily a side that scrums for penalties, but very efficient in terms of creating a solid platform. I can talk through all of them. Australia have brought some grunt into their pack once again which is a dangerous thing. They look for physical encounters and they will also be good,” he added.

Meanwhile Van Graan said the Bok management have been doing some research on their Pool opponents. Each team poses a different threat in terms of their styles of play and having watched a couple of warm-up matches in the last few weeks, the Bok assistant coach made a couple of interesting observations.

"Ever since we knew who was going to be in the pool we started studying them. I thought there were a few good Test matches over the last few weekends,” Van Graan said.

“The Japanese with their running, ball-in-hand game will pose a few questions. The Samoans have a physical pack and big backs and the Scots play a continuity game. The USA bring a set-piece battle and certain type of line-outs that they attack from. Obviously at this stage we are focusing on ourselves but we are analysing them as they go week by week,” Van Graan added.

The Boks will announce their World Cup squad tomorrow night.

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