Coach Jacques Nienaber says wins over Wales and Scotland have given the Springboks the momentum needed to overhaul England at Twickenham on Saturday.
READ: Pollard, Reinach in, Jantjies duo out for Boks
South Africa will head into this weekend’s final Test of the season high in confidence after beating Wales 23-18 and Scotland 20-15 in their opening two games on tour.
Earlier in the week, assistant coach Deon Davids admitted that the Boks are aiming to sign off the calendar year as the best team in the world, much like they did at the end of 2019 and 2020.
On Tuesday, Nienaber named his team to face Eddie Jones’ side, with the lineup showing only three personnel changes from the team that fronted Scotland in Edinburgh. Handre Pollard and Cobus Reinach start as the halfbacks in place of Elton and Herschel Jantjies and Lood de Jager takes over from Franco Mostert as the No 5.
Commenting on his selection, Nienaber said: “We built up good momentum in the Tests against Wales and Scotland, and it is important for us to transfer that into our final match of the tour against England, so we opted to make only three changes to the starting team for this weekend’s clash.
“England will pose different threats to Scotland and, with that in mind, we have decided to start with Handre, Cobus and Lood.
“Elton, Herschel and Franco have shown that they can inject energy and ignite a spark on attack off the bench, which will be handy against an English outfit that we know will be highly charged up for this match.”
The Bok boss added that they anticipated an epic battle between the teams, whose last fixture against each other came in the 2019 RWC final.
“England have made it clear that they’ll come hard at us in this match, and with a few British & Irish Lions players in their midst, home-ground advantage and a new record of eight wins in a row against Australia adding to their motivation this weekend, so we know it will be a hard grind,” said the Bok coach.
“That said, we will enter the match equally motivated, especially with the opportunity to retain our status as the top team in the world for a third successive season and winning all three matches in the Castle Lager Outgoing Tour for the first time in eight years being a real prospect.
“This has been arguably the most challenging season for a Springbok team yet due to the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, and to finish off the year with a victory against England would be a fantastic reward for the team.”
As with most of the northern-hemisphere teams, Nienaber expected a monstrous forward battle, but said England have the players and ability to mix things up on the day.
“England have traditionally had a strong pack of forwards and backs that can trigger action on attack, but they have a number of new players and coaches this season, who will want to make their mark, so there may be a different dynamic in their style of play,” he said.
“We’ve been doing our homework and we’ve been putting in the hard yards both on and off the field, so we need to make sure we are mentally and physically sharp on Saturday and convert the opportunities we create on attack into points because in a Test match such as this there are generally only a few of them.”
