South African Women’s national rugby team coach, Stanley Raubenheimer, is hoping that his team will transfer the great results in their recent friendly test matches to the World Cup in New Zealand. The Boks departed for the global showpiece from O.R Tambo International Airport in Kempton Park on Saturday afternoon.
The Boks have been in scintillating form, beating higher-ranked teams ahead of the World Cup in New Zealand. They played two test matches against Japan away, winning one and losing the other in July. They then displayed great form by beating Spain convincingly in the two test matches at home in August.
Five wins in six match = 2022 #TogetherMovingForward@FNBSA pic.twitter.com/xWEnKiWOLf
— Springbok Women (@WomenBoks) August 19, 2022
“From a confidence and peaking at the right time and believing that the things that we were working on in the past three to four years is finally coming together. One thing was to keep the ball for longer and that puts pressure on the opposition and with that pressure we can create scoring opportunities.”
“That’s what we want to achieve and if we do that we will get a very good opportunity to score”, says coach Stanley Raubenheimer.
The Boks have qualified three previous times for the World Cup in 2006, 2010 and 2014. They finished 12th in Canada in 2006 and then finished tenth in England in 2010 and also tenth in France four years later. The team did not qualify for the 2017 World Cup in Ireland. The Boks will be in a tough Group alongside England, France and Fiji.
“We know that France and England will not be easy games but our main focus is to go and enjoy and make sure that we implement our game. We do our structures according to what the coaches have been teaching us and we are planning to take one game at a time. Not to frustrate ourselves. We have to focus on that one and move to another one. Main target is to give it all in the first game and when we play against Fiji, we give it all,” says skipper Nolusindiso Booi.
🙌 Tomorrow morning, Zenay Jordaan leaves for the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand for a final fling in Green and Gold – more here: https://t.co/xTPuwodUup#TogetherMovingForward pic.twitter.com/w9olwcuMee
— Springbok Women (@WomenBoks) September 23, 2022
Boks player Zenay Jordaan says the team will play a final preparation match against Scotland next week to fine-tune their game and rectify the mistakes.
“We don’t expect it to be easy, it will be tough, but, it’s also a way for us to see where we are in terms of our preparation and also the build up to the world cup itself and see what boxes we can tick and what we can still work on to take on the first game against France” says Joraan.
Awesome to have exco member Peggy Sue Khumalo coming to ORTIA to wish the team well on their #RWC22 campaign. #TogetherMovingForward pic.twitter.com/bvoSI0rKWJ
— Springbok Women (@WomenBoks) September 24, 2022
The South Africa Rugby Union EXCO member Peggy Sue Khumalo says the expectations are very high.
“We have very high hopes for the team we expecting the to really advance we want them to go past the earlier stages of the world cup. In fact if they can get to the semi-finals we will be more than happy and SA always want a winning team if they get to the final that will even be a bonus,” says Khumalo.
The team will kick off their campaign against France on the 8th of October. Reported by Vincent Sitsula
