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Springboks take on British, Irish Lions on Saturday

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One of Rugby’s trickiest tours from a logistical and biological stand-point, culminates tomorrow in Cape Town, when the world champion Springboks take on the British and Irish Lions in the third and deciding test match of the 2021 series.

It’s a match that for most will only come around once in a Springbok rugby player’s career.

Captain Siya Kolisi says his team cannot wait for this match, and are entirely focused on matters on the field of play.

The Springboks maintain they play a winning brand that suits their rugby DNA.

Kolisi says he won’t be pressured into changing a single thing.

We have not changed our plans. We are still playing the same way. That’s who we are. We can’t run away from it. We are South Africans. It works for us. It’s like us going and looking at another team winning while we are complaining about how they are playing.

Backline coach, Mzwandile Stick, went on to elaborate that this Boks team won’t be getting a complex anytime soon about how they play.

 “If we want to slow the ball down and make it boring, we will do that as other people are saying we are playing boring rugby. But from our side, we don’t go to a game intentionally saying we want to slow things down and if the British and Irish Lions want to play touch rugby that would be nice for us. So, they are more than welcome to do so. We are not going to decide what they must do and also they are not going to tell us how to play the game.

Staying focused about what happens on the pitch as opposed to off it, is half the trick to getting through a Lions series with a winning record intact.

can’t worry too much about what is happening off the field. We are focused as the players. We play rugby on the field and that’s all we can do and we know things happen off the field. We can’t control that,” says Kolisi.

The facts remains, the Springboks fluffed their lines in the first test match and recovered in the second to force the decider. They’ve scored more tries, shut out the Lions and lived up to their World Champion credentials as the series has progressed.

They’ve also had to endure same heinous off-the-ball incidents, from a knee to the throat to more than one instance of biting, and through it all, the players have remained relatively calm thanks in no small part to the leadership of Kolisi.

We know this is the one that counts. Everything that we have done before doesn’t count. So, we have worked as hard as we can to make sure we fix what he had to fix. We had a good training week. We prepared a lot off the field. Guys are still preparing, looking at the clips to see how we can get better. This is our final and it does give us confidence. By the way, we played last week to take our last game into confidence, but this one is what matters the most. We want to remember this one more than anything else,” adds Kolisi. 

A Lions tour was never going to go off without a few talking points, manufactured by a few role players to deflect attention.

Both sides have been tightly locked down due to prevailing circumstances beyond their control, on Saturday they get to leave it all on the field, there’s no second chance.

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