‘Springboks have renewed belief in comeback ability,’ says Kolbe

Springbok wing Cheslin Kolbe says the current group has a renewed belief in their comeback ability ahead of their second Rugby Championship Test against the All Blacks at the Cape Town Stadium on Saturday (5pm).

The Boks fought back from 10 points down in the final 12 minutes of the game at Ellis Park last weekend to clinch a 31-27 win over their great rivals, which is something that this group of players had never done before.

Since Rassie Erasmus and his coaching staff took over in 2018, the Boks have beaten the All Blacks five times, with two of those were very comfortable wins, in Mbombela in 2022 (26-10) and at Twickenham last year (35-7), however two of the other three wins were by two points, while the World Cup final was just a one point affair in favour of the South Africans.

Confidence boost

In all of those games the Boks had never had to make a huge comeback at the end of the match to get the win, so being able to do that last weekend will have given them a massive confidence boost going forward.

“In the past we haven’t been able to come back from that sort of (big) deficit and finish the game off with a win (against the All Blacks). So it just shows you the character of this group and the belief of each and every player,” explained Kolbe this week, ahead of Saturday’s Test at Cape Town Stadium.

“The willingness to never give up has always been there and that motivates us to go out onto that field and not have any regrets.

“We have a group now that can cover various positions and can create things out of nothing. So for us it is just about making sure we do the basics well and that we execute the game plan that we have been training throughout the week.

“So having that belief (to be able to make a big comeback) really does give us a lot of confidence in the group. We showcased that in the last 20 minutes last week and we just need to grow further on top of that now.”

Fast start

In the game at Ellis Park the All Blacks got off to a typically fast start, which they are known for, and that put the Boks under a lot of pressure early on.

It allowed the visitors to lead at halftime, and take big leads at various stages of the second half, before the brilliant recovery from the hosts, and Kolbe admits that they will need to start better at the Cape Town Stadium.

“They almost caught us out with that at Ellis Park, but luckily, we managed to pull it through. So, we need to lay a good foundation in the first 20 minutes (on Saturday),” said Kolbe.

The hard-working winger also mentioned the massive support the All Blacks are set to get in the mother city, but claimed that they have plenty of their own fans as well. “They have a lot of supporters in Cape Town, but so do we as we all saw during the trophy tour after the Rugby World Cup,” said Kolbe.

“We draw a lot of energy from them. But we also know that the only way to gain more support is to win, so hopefully we’re winning over a few more supporters here.”