‘Rejuvenated’ Boks only have eyes for Wales — Mbonambi

The Springboks are taking their end of year tour to the UK day by day and are currently fully focussed on the first challenge which is the opening Test against Wales in Cardiff next week.

Most of the squad, bar the UK and France based players, have been taking part in a training camp in France this week and will fly out to Wales on Sunday where the full squad will gather ahead of their final week build up.

“We are taking this tour day by day and game by game, so at the moment we are putting all our focus on our first game which is Wales in Cardiff,” explained Bok hooker Bongi Mbonambi.

“After the Lions series and Rugby Championship we (locally based players) got three weeks to be off at home and rejuvenate ourselves, so we arrived here in France feeling fresh. Training has been good, the team spirit is high and we are looking forward to the end of year tour.”

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The preparations for the game against Wales have been going full steam ahead, with the team well aware of the challenge that they face.

Many of the players in the Wales squad have featured in the United Rugby Championship so far, while a large contingent were part of the British and Irish Lions squad that went down to the Boks in SA, so the squad will have a good idea of the kind of rugby to expect from the Welsh team.

“We have Salmaan (Moerat) here who has been playing some URC rugby and we have been watching a bit of URC rugby, so we know that the Northern Hemisphere teams play a different brand of rugby,” admitted Mbonambi.

“The Lions series games also come into consideration when it comes to our preparation, so the planning is going well and we are excited for the challenge, but there still a lot of work to be done from our side analysing the team and analysing the players.”

Following the match against Wales the Boks go on to play Scotland in Edinburgh and England in London on successive weekends.