‘I wanted 13 out of 13’ — Jesse Kriel on Springbok season

Winning 11 out of 13 games, clinching the Rugby Championship and enjoying a clean sweep on their end-of-year-tour to the UK wasn’t enough for Springbok centre Jesse Kriel, who said he wanted a full house of wins over the year.

In a light-hearted moment at the end of their recent UK tour Kriel was asked a question by Bok assistant coach Mzwandile Stick in Xhosa on what he thought of their fantastic season, that saw them only lose two games, by tight one point margins.

“Ndicel’ i13 out of 13,” said Kriel, which translates to “I wanted 13 out of 13.” He continued: “We dropped the ball, and we’re very disappointed. It’s small margins. Next season, we want to push to go even better.”

It very easily could have been the perfect season for the Boks results-wise, and it shows just how high their standards are that despite being the most dominant international team over the year, they still aren’t satisfied with what they are producing, and believe that can get better.

They wrapped up their UK tour with a powerful 45-12 win over Wales in Cardiff, but as in their wins over Scotland at Murrayfield (32-15) and England at Twickenham (29-20), it wasn’t a perfect performance by any means.

Missed chances

The Boks are so good that they will have been disappointed not to have put 60+ points on Wales who they absolutely dominated, but missed a hatful of chances.

In their games against Scotland and England they were pushed hard and were in a real dogfight for the first 60 minutes of both matches, before pulling away for comfortable-looking wins.

Kriel said the team were happy with the year as a whole, but there was still room for improvement and the players would now be looking to replicate that form for their franchises, before joining up again and trying to be even better over the next international season.

“Obviously the guys are very happy with the three wins. We set a goal at the beginning of the tour to go unbeaten because we haven’t achieved that since 2013, so we’re very happy with that and the performance against Wales,” admitted Kriel.

“But there’s still a lot we can work on as a team. It’s been a very good year for us. We used (over) 50 players, and everyone put up their hand.

“When you get the right people in the room, a year like this is possible. All the guys that came in did so without egos and just wanted to get the job done and win for South Africa, so it’s been very positive in that sense, and I really feel we are building something special.

“For now, we are going back to our clubs, and we’ll try to focus on getting better as players, so hopefully we can contribute when we get back together and become even better as a team.”