Springboks: Jacques Nienaber believes innovation is key ahead of 2022 season
Springbok head coach Jacques Nienaber wants his side to “stay creative” and develop in 2022 as he looks ahead to the international season and the 2023 Rugby World Cup.
In July, Wales will travel to South Africa for a three-match Test series which will be Nienaber’s first assignment in the 2022 season.
Innovation and improvisation
The 49-year-old is all too aware of the chasing pack looking to claim the Springboks’ spot at the summit of the World Rankings and understands his team will need to be innovative to prevent that from happening.
“The one thing I can tell you, is that if you want disaster you must fail to improvise, to build and improve” Nienaber said.
“The other teams are chasing, they are improving and they are looking to improvise.
“The big challenge for us is that we still stay creative, so we don’t get too arrogant and say, ‘listen we know how to win test matches, we know how to win a World Cup, we know how to end number one in the world after a year’.
“I think that is an arrogant way of looking at it, and that will be our challenge, that we don’t become arrogant like that and do stay creative.”
Nienaber saw a great deal of character amongst other positives in the 2021 season but described the overall performance as statistically “average”.
“Obviously there are some things that we do that are working for us,” said Nienaber.
“I think we had a fairly average season, if you look percentages of games won. I do think if you look at the conditions under which we pulled off some victories.
“If you look at the British & Irish Lions series, the amount of preparation that we had going into that series, to pull off a victory there, I think the players performed exceptionally well.
“If you look at that victory we had against New Zealand, after 16 weeks away from our families in bio-secure bubbles, the massive mental strain on the team, to pull off a victory off the back of that environment for so long, was exceptional.
“It was an unbelievable push by the players to get that.
“Similar teams that are in the Southern Hemisphere, New Zealand and Australia at the back end of year tour where they were now 12 weeks, 14 weeks in bio-secure bubbles.
“It’s tough to stay positive, keep on pushing, you are not allowed to go out.
“In that sense, we did some things well but I think we will shoot ourselves in the foot if we stay arrogant and think we have all the answers and don’t innovate.”
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