Boks eager to ‘fix problems’ as they prepare for physical Argentina

The Springbok will focus primarily on themselves, according to prop Frans Malherbe, as they prepare to face a physical Los Pumas side in their final Rugby Championship clash at Ellis Park on Saturday evening.

A lot has been said over the past week-and-a-half about the national team’s poor performance against the All Blacks in Auckland and they will be aiming to fix a lot of those problems against Argentina.

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The visitors head into the game off a morale boosting last gasp win over the Wallabies and they will be looking to take that momentum into the match.

The Boks should feel confident as they thumped Australia at Loftus at the start of the competition and with Argentina at a similar level the hosts will be favourites.

Malherbe, however, cautioned against being overconfident and admitted that the team’s focus was more on themselves than their opponents.

Difficult to compare

“It is difficult to compare them, but Argentina is a team with their own challenges. They are a very physical side and they don’t go away. They play for the full 80 minutes, as we saw in their game against Australia,” said Malherbe.

“From our side we have to fix things that have not been good enough (in the Rugby Championship). So the focus will mostly be on us trying to get those things right.”

Against the All Blacks it was a dreadful start to the match that cost the Boks dearly as they slipped to a 17-0 deficit early on, which they couldn’t make up over the rest of the game as they eventually fell to a 35-20 defeat.

Hard at work

Malherbe says the whole team has been hard at work trying to fix the problems from that match, himself included as they target an improved performance against Los Pumas.

“That was not the performance that we wanted. There were a few things individually that we need to sort out. But we reviewed after the game and I saw a few points and aspects that I have to be better at. But I think that goes for everyone,” admitted Malherbe.

“The team has worked on those things last week and we have continued to work on them this week. We have had an in depth look at that game and what went wrong in certain scenarios. We were honest with each other and we have focused on those problems.”

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