Freedom Cup the goal, not records, says captain Siya Kolisi

Springbok captain Siya Kolisi says that they the team hasn’t spoken about becoming dominant over the All Blacks or sealing what would be a historic fourth win in a row over the All Blacks in their Rugby Championship clash at the Cape Town Stadium on Saturday (5pm).

Only once in their history have the Boks ever beaten the All Blacks four times in a row, which they achieved over 1937 to 1949 when the beat their biggest rivals in six straight games.

That feat has never been repeated, including in the professional era which kicked off in 1995, with the Boks three wins in a row in 2009, and on their current run that saw them win at Twickenham, in the World Cup final and at Ellis Park, the best they have managed.

But despite having a chance to make a bit of history, Kolisi says their first focus is fully on winning the Freedom Cup, and then the Rugby Championship, and he was willing to play through the pain of a fractured nose to help the team achieve that.

Freedom Cup

“It’s not something I’ve thought about (four wins in a row). We are just focused on winning the Freedom Cup. It’s huge for the team. It’s not just huge for me, it’s huge for the whole team,” explained Kolisi.

“We are in a place that we’ve never been in before. As a group in the Rugby Championship, we’ve never been in this position before. We’ve always won here against Argentina, gone to Australia and lost there.

“The Freedom Cup is something that we’ve only seen in pictures or we’ve walked past it. We’ve never been able to touch it. It’s big. Coming back to Cape Town as well. Playing here after so many years and there’s so much to play for.

“We can put ourselves in a very good position for the Rugby Championship and win the Freedom Cup. It’s not about me. If I wasn’t ok, I wouldn’t have played. It wouldn’t have changed anything for the group. I just really wanted to play, I wanted that opportunity and the doc gave me the opportunity.”

Backlash

The Boks have also prepared as best they could for what is expected to be an All Blacks backlash, after they let a 10 point lead slip in the final 12 minutes of the past weekend’s game at Ellis Park.

Kolisi admitted that the Boks hadn’t been at their best in that game and they could thus improve drastically this time round.

“The whole week has been about the team and what we’ve done to get here. It’s not about being wary of the All Blacks. We need to put our best foot forward because we didn’t do that last week and had to fight back. We can’t do that this weekend,” said Kolisi.

“The players they have picked for the game are clearly showing what they want to do. They want to run the ball. We will be going out there this time to stop them from doing that.”