The Springboks fell short of winning the 2022 Rugby Championship but Jacques Nienaber was pleased to have developed depth at wing and flyhalf during the campaign.
The Springboks took the positives from a third successive Rugby Championship victory, despite falling short of defeating Argentina by the 39 points they needed to pip New Zealand to the title.
Instead, the 38-21 victory at a packed Kings Park in Durban had them finishing second in the tournament, and doing the double over the Pumas to go with wins over both New Zealand and Australia represented progress, said the Bok coach.
Nienaber noted that he had used 34 players in the tournament and that some questions had been answered over position depth.
“We built some squad depth. Some players got some experience but that wasn’t the main aim – which was to win the Rugby Championship and we fell short on that. But there were some positives to take out of it,” he said.
“We are in a better position now in terms of learning about certain positions than we were when we started. There was always this big issue around flyhalf and whether Damian [Willemse] could play there and hats off to Frans [Steyn] today; in a very short space of time he had to slot in and he will just get better in terms of that.
“We’ve also had Kurt-Lee [Arendse] and Canan [Moodie] come through and now Cheslin [Kolbe] has to perform if he wants to get back in – but we know he is quality, and we look forward to welcoming him back.”
The Springboks will return to their franchises, before reassembling ahead of a European tour in November with highly anticipated fixtures against Ireland and France.
“We’re not where we want to be yet,” admitted Nienaber. “We need consistency, and we’ll probably get a pretty good idea on our end-of-year tour. We play No 1 [Ireland] and No 2 [France] teams in the world and we have an SA A side, and it will be a challenging tour. But it will give us nice answers as to where we are.”
REPORT: Bittersweet victory for Boks
Photo: EPA/Gerhard Duraan
