Two 25-man squads are starting to acclimatise to being back in the Springbok set up ahead of the Boks showdown at Newlands in Cape Town on Saturday. A Springbok green squad will be up against a gold squad made up of Bok players, Blitzboks and Junior Boks.

Thirteen members of the victorious World Cup winning squad are present, but so too are lots of young talented players who are experiencing their first time in a Bok setup.

Springbok prop and Rugby World Cup winner, Steven Kitshof, says the young players are adjusting well.

“There’s a lot of new faces but they adjusting very nicely there’s a lot of information that’s coming, a lot of detail that they need to learn but they all willing to learn to work hard. There are some really talented youngsters that played over the weekend that’s in the group at the moment. It’s very energetic and awesome to see that they get an opportunity to display good skills and talent this weekend.”

Springbok eighth man, Duane Vermeulen, says that even though there has been a lot of uncertainty this year with COVID-19, the Boks need to be able to adapt.

He says they are training hard to improve their conditioning, with most of them having played very little game time this year due to the lockdown restrictions on sport.

Vemeulen says they are now focusing on competing in the Currie Cup. He was speaking online during a virtual media briefing.

“We can only focus on what we can control and that is the now the most important thing is how you can prepare your body to be physically ready once the competition starts. What we focusing on now is that has been cleared by SA Rugby is the Currie Cup.”