Expect ‘tightly contested’ World Cup battle, says Bok coach Nienaber

With excitement in the air in the build-up to the Rugby World Cup starting in France next week, Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber is expecting this edition to be tightly contested, as there’s not much separating the contenders.

The contenders’ circle for the Webb Ellis Cup includes the Boks, who are the defending champions. It also includes hosts France, world number one Ireland and three-time winners the All Blacks.

An interesting aspect of this World Cup is that the said favourites might meet each other in the quarter-finals as they are on the same side of the draw.

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Nienaber’s Springboks are chasing history, bidding to become the first nation to win the Rugby World Cup four times. However, reaching that milestone won’t be easy. There are plenty of teams that have the potential to go all the way.

“I think if you look at the World Cup, we have spoken about how close the contenders are,” Nienaber said.

“There are a lot of teams that will be in a position to win the World Cup and will believe they can. It’s going to be the most tightly contested World Cup in history.”

Consistency is key

Nienaber is of the view that teams in the running for the title cannot afford to have a poor performance. If they do, they will be run off the park by opponents.

He used an example of how the Boks and New Zealand took advantage of each other’s mishaps this year.

“When we played New Zealand four or five weeks ago in New Zealand in the Rugby Championship, they had a good and quite comfortable result against us. And this time around (in the 35-7 victory against the All Blacks in London last week) it was different,” Nienaber said.

“So I guess that if you’re off by one percent, various teams can put you away.

“The key thing is to make sure that you’re consistently 100% ready for a Test match. If you’re a little bit off against the top teams in the world, they can put you to the sword.”

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The Bok mentor also reassured that his team had embraced the tag of favourites as holders of the Webb Ellis Cup.

“In terms of favourites, we always knew we were going to come to this World Cup as defending world champions. That’s something we can’t hide away from,” Nienaber said.

“We can’t shrug that tag off. It is what it is. We are the current world champions and we will have to bear that and we are comfortable with it.”