2016’s harsh lesson has been taken to heart, says De Allende

Damian de Allende knows exactly why Rassie Erasmus and co have been bordering on paranoid when they discuss the dangers of the Springboks facing Italy in a crucial World Cup meeting in Shizuoka on Friday.

The imposing midfielder is one of only three survivors in the starting line-up (though there are were seven on the bench too) that experienced 2016’s shock 18-20 loss to the Azzurri.

In fact, the 26-year-old was a try-scorer on that dark day in Florence, but that was little consolation.

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On the world’s biggest stage, De Allende doesn’t want to repeat his relative personal glory (for want of a better word), but rather contribute to an overall performance that avoids the mistakes made almost three years ago.

“That wasn’t a nice feeling, losing to them for the first time,” he said with an almost rueful smile.

“What I can remember from that game is that we played quite loose and their forwards dominated us, firstly when they came close to our tryline and also when we got close. They stopped quite a lot of our rolling mauls. We learned a lot that day.”

The theme that South Africa will need to take the wind out of Italy’s sails by hitting back up front has been dominant this week, illustrated vividly by Erasmus only picking two backs on the bench.

However, De Allende, pleasingly, reminded all that’s not just the battle of the forwards that will go a long way to determining the outcome.

“They’re quite potent from the set-pieces. We analysed quite a few clips from there last year and saw that they had that strength at that stage already,” he said.

“We’ll have our challenges there, but we’ll definitely sort it out.”

Meanwhile, another member involved in Florence, Faf de Klerk, noted that Shizuoka’s expected damp weather won’t affect the Boks’ approach too much.

It’s an understandable comment given that Erasmus’ game-plan is based on being pragmatic, which is ideal for the purpose of the opposition they face as well.

“The weather changes quite frequently here,” said the nippy scrumhalf.

“But we’ll go out with the same plan we’ve come up with for the game. We’re going to play our normal game and that style of play suits a wet match as well. We might need to aerial a bit more if it rains a lot, but we also have a lot of forwards to use in those slower conditions.”

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