SA A coach Mzwandile Stick on tour defeats: ‘Everyone has been damaged’

It was a damaging end-of-year-tour for the South Africa A team as they suffered disappointing defeats against understrength club teams Munster and Bristol Bears in Ireland and England over the past two weeks.

It was an experienced squad littered with exciting up and coming youngsters that were expected to do the business in their two games in the UK, but were instead embarrassed by their understrength hosts.

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For the more experienced players, who were just off the Springboks squad, it was a damaging experience, as they did nothing to boost their chances of getting into the Bok mix, however, coach Mzwandile Stick believes the youngsters will be okay.

“I think everyone involved has been damaged by this. The pressure must not only be put on the players. For us as coaching staff we also have to be honest and look at ourselves and see what we could have done better,” explained Stick.

“Sometimes, you also have to learn the hard way. The youngsters got an opportunity on this tour, went through pressure in the past two games. It was packed and loud in the stadiums. That’s the closest thing you can experience in a Test match game.

“A lot of them have a lot to learn. I don’t think this is going to damage their future. Yes, we are disappointed, but I don’t doubt that the youngsters in this team have the potential to make it far in the future. They will get better as human beings and players as well.”

Disjointed SA A

The SA A team looked very disjointed in both of their games, and struggled for any sort of fluidity, which was down to the hastily assembled side having barely any training sessions together ahead of the tour.

The week in the lead up to the SA A players leaving from SA, was the ideal time for the players to get together with the coaching staff, but that time wasn’t utilised with the players having the week off, which surely contributed to the dismal showing.

“We haven’t played these SA A games in a while. Now we know better. For me as a coach, I would have loved to have a week or two of a camp with the guys, where we can just implement all the stuff we want to execute in our plan,” admitted Stick.

“When we came here, we had two training sessions before we played Munster. The same goes for this week, we had three training sessions.

“In the future, one thing I would love would be to have more time with the guys. As I say, we have brilliant players, but if we were a bit more aligned, we could have had better results.”