Jean Kleyn: There are no warm-up games anymore, Boks’ World Cup starts now

Springboks lock Jean Kleyn says Saturday’s warm-up match against Wales at the Millennium Stadium will serve as the start of the team’s Rugby World Cup campaign.

The Boks will begin the defence of the Webb Ellis Cup in France on September 10 in a clash with Scotland. Before that, they have two warm-up matches to play, against Wales in Cardiff on Saturday and New Zealand next weekend in London.

There’s been much debate about the significance and pros and cons of the warm-up matches in rugby circles and in the media.

Quizzed on how they are going about preparing for the warm-up matches, Kleyn said every game the Boks play is important, with this weekend’s match starting their charge, with the end goal to be in the final on October 28 in Paris.

“This is the start of our World Cup, any game from now onwards is the biggest game,” Kleyn told the media on Monday.

‘Biggest match of your life’

“Everything is at stake every weekend. I don’t think we can overlook any game over the next 10 or 11 weeks as just another game. When you’re playing for the Springboks at international Test level, there’s no ‘this is just another warm-up game’ … every weekend is the next biggest match of your life,” he said.

Looking ahead to the encounter against Warren Gatland’s outfit, Kleyn said the pack will look to impose themselves in the match.

“Wales have always been good and competitive on the international level. They’re a very threatening side, we’ll be looking to put in our best performance this weekend,” he said.

“We don’t set ourselves targets or metrics for the weekends; we want to impose ourselves as a pack, that’s our tactic all the time.

“There’s nothing specific that’s changing this weekend, we are going to play our game and try to impose ourselves and see how they deal with that.”