Nienaber eager to see Fourie and Van Staden drive the Boks’ system

Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber is hoping to see Deon Fourie and Marco van Staden drive the Boks’ set-piece system during their final Rugby World Cup pool match against Tonga at the Stade de Marseille on Sunday night.

The Boks only have one specialist hooker left in their squad, Bongi Mbonambi, after the injury to Malcolm Marx, who they replaced with Handre Pollard, So Fourie and Van Staden are now the hooker back-ups over the rest of the competition.

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The Bok management has thus used the Tonga match as an opportunity to rest Mbonambi and give Fourie and Van Staden a solid run, so that they are fully prepared should they reach the tournament knockouts as expected.

In the match Nienaber wants to see both players take charge of the set-pieces whenever they get the chance.

“I want to see them drive our set-pieces, the scrums and lineouts, within our system,” explained Nienaber.

“There will be challenges within those systems and then they, as the set-piece leaders, will drive certain set-pieces for us, so in scrum time if things aren’t going our way, (they need) to find solutions.

“The coaches, Deon (Davids) and Daan (Human) have put something in place that they think will be good enough to get the better of Tonga in those departments. If those plans or structures don’t work, they’ll have to find solutions.

“The other thing is they must just bring their normal game. There’s going to be 200 breakdowns in this game, and there they have to apply themselves.”

Team improvement

Nienaber also wants to see an improvement from the rest of the team, after they suffered a tight defeat against Ireland in their last game, with them now needing a big bonus point win to help them reach the quarterfinals.

“Let’s take the result (against Tonga) out of the way. We all know that we need to get a win and a bonus point. So let’s park the result,” said Nienaber.

“We’ve got certain things that we have to rectify that we couldn’t get right against Ireland. In terms of our game plan, there are definitely some things that we will try a little bit differently in this game to see if it works.

“The result is very important but we need to fix that if we do get the opportunity to go into a quarter-final or knockout rugby. If we don’t fix those things we probably won’t last long in this competition.”