The Springbok Women are expecting a wounded United States side to deploy a fierce response this weekend in the second Test between the two nations in Pretoria.
This past weekend, the Bok Women played some stunning rugby to blast past the visitors 34-21, built largely on a first-half blitz that took just about everyone by surprise. Now more familiar with the conditions and more knowledgeable regarding the significant improvement of the Bok Women, the US are predicted to be a far more dangerous outfit at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday (kick-off 1.30pm).
Utility-back Eloise Webb heralded what has been described as “one of the best halves of Springbok Women’s rugby” — which saw them lead 29-0 at half-time — but agreed that this weekend the US would perhaps be a much harder prospect to tame.
“We expect a whole different US team,” said Webb, on Tuesday at the Bok Women training in Johannesburg.
“They are going to try and come out guns blazing and try to get the tempo up there for us to get tired,” she added. “I think we’ve done really well with our conditioning so far.
“We are really fit as a team. We really understand the plan that has been given to us. We are excited to play rugby and to do it against a top team is amazing.”
Webb came onto the field in the 54th minute, with the US building up a head of steam. The visitors would go on to score three unanswered tries from the 58th minute through No 8 Freda Tafuna, wing Ashley Cowdrey and prop Elizabeth Cook, flyhalf Bella Vogel converting all of them.
With the first half so positive, the drop-off in the second stanza was an irksome development – arguably more irritating than worrying — and one that Webb and company will be striving to avoid this weekend.
“We, as a team, aren’t happy with the second-half performance just because the first half went so well,” Webb said.
“There are a lot of work-ons but also a lot of positives we can take out of it. Our defence had to work a little bit harder in that second half. They had more ball possession in that second half, where in the first half we were in control of the game.
“We focus on the small things to get better as a team rather than focusing on the opposition,” the 30-year-old continued. “We need to work on a few things and that is why we are so positive as a team because we can see we are working on the little things and getting it ready.”
Perhaps the most important development within the Bok Women system is the ability to control the game on the outside. The US are known for their ability to shift the ball down the line to find open spaces on the tramlines, but were efficiently shut down by their hosts.
Webb said: “I think most teams think they can get us on the outside but that has been one of the work-ons we have been doing after (last year’s) World Cup.
“They struggled to get around us. I think they thought it was going to be easy. We expect them to come guns blazing this weekend because they have now analysed us,” Webb concluded.
