South African backrower Joe van Niekerk says the Springboks will fight fire with fire if Saturday’s Tri-Nations rugby union international against Australia becomes spiteful.
Both teams go into the match on record losses to the New Zealand All Blacks, the Australians most recently on a 50-21 defeat at Stadium Australia last week.
Australia had a 38-27 win in the 2002 head-to-head in Brisbane, which was marred by a first-half brawl that resulted in Wallabies Jeremy Paul and Justin Harrison and South African Werner Greeff being sin-binned for 10 minutes.
”Obviously test matches are very fired up and if one of their players is going to get stuck into ours, then we’re going to get stuck into theirs,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
”I think it’s going to be a very fiery match — Australia is down and we’re down and a wounded animal is dangerous when it’s down. You can expect a lot of niggle.”
The Springboks were trailing 24-3 in Brisbane last July when the melee broke out and van Niekerk said the distraction helped get the visitors back on track.
He was sidelined with a knee injury during the Springboks’s 52-16 loss to New Zealand at Pretoria and is expected to get a recall when South Africa coach Rudolf Straeuli announces his squad on Thursday.
”It wasn’t a nice sight to see the Boks go down,” Van Niekerk said of the Pretoria match. ”We can’t forget … it completely, but keep it a little bit there and remember how sore it was to lose by 50 points to the All Blacks.
”Obviously, the Wallabies are keen to bounce back after losing 50 points to the All Blacks. I think it’s going to be a really tight test match and (I’m) looking forward to getting stuck into a few Wallabies.”
Van Niekerk, who has 17 caps and was voted among the five players of the year by the International Rugby Board last season, says the South Africans needed to win more away games to be a threat for the World Cup starting in October in Australia.
With a win and a loss going into the Tri-Nations road games in Australia and New Zealand, the Springboks had identified the Brisbane match as the must-win encounter.
”We beat Australia at Newlands and went down to the All Blacks on our turf, so it’s really important for us to come back in either of these two tests — I see this as being the one we really have got to attack,” he said.
Australian coach Eddie Jones made one change to the team that lost to the All Blacks, elevating Chris Latham to the starting lineup at fullback for Matt Burke, who was dropped to the bench. Jones said he was expecting a physical match against the Springboks, with the usual niggle.
”If that’s what South Africa is talking about, I’m sure it’s going to come to fruition,” Jones said. ”We’ll play the way we normally play — no rubbish in the game at all.
”We don’t try to play outside the law of the game. We try to play aggressive football.”
Jones retained former rugby league internationals Lote Tuqiri, Wendell Sailor and Mat Rogers will start on the wings and at outside centre for the second consecutive test, hoping for dramatic improvement in their positional awareness.
Tuqiri re-signed with the New South Wales Waratahs for the 2004 Super 12 season after the Wallabies squad was announced. He played with the Waratahs in his first season in rugby union this year. – Sapa-AP