Kolisi to reach milestone, Boks out to avoid fourth straight defeat

The Springboks will be going all out to avoid a fourth straight Test defeat when they face the All Blacks in the 101st meeting between the teams in the Gold Coast on Saturday, with kick-off at 9.05am SA time.

The Boks go into Saturday’s final Rugby Championship Test having lost twice to the Wallabies (28-26 and 30-17) and once to the All Blacks (19-17) in the last month, in Australia.

The last time the Boks lost four Tests in a row was at the end of 2016, when Allister Coetzee was in charge of the Boks.

On 8 October 2016 the All Blacks beat the Boks 57-15 in Durban and just a few weeks later on their end-of-year tour they also fell to England 37-21 in London, Italy 20-18 in Florence and Wales 27-13 in Cardiff.

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Here then are some of the best facts and stats ahead of Saturday’s meeting in Gold Coast:

Statistics:

• Sbu Nkosi, Bongi Mbonambi and Malcolm Marx need one more try to get to take their Test tally to 10 tries and 50 points.
• This encounter will be Siya Kolisi’s 30^th Test match as captain, surpassing Francois Pienaar to become the fourth most capped Springbok captain behind John Smit (83), Jean de Villiers (37), and Gary Teichmann (36).
• Frans Steyn needs to score nine more points to earn 150 Test points.

Miscellaneous:

• The total Test caps for the Springbok starting line-up this weekend is 647.
• There are 272 caps in the backline with 375 caps amongst the forwards. On the bench there are a further 305 caps.
• The average caps per player in the backline are 38 the forwards 46 while the players on the bench average 38.