As we go into the final Super 14 season, Saru breaks from tradition and announces its list of Boks early, writes Andy Capostagno.
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/ 26 November 2009
The Springboks have made six changes for their tour-endind showdown against Ireland at Croke Park on Saturday.
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/ 11 November 2009
Springbok coach Peter de Villiers has defended a decision to take his jaded stars on a three-Test tour of Europe that starts on Friday against France
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/ 28 October 2009
Blue Bulls stars Bakkies Botha, Victor Matfield and Fourie du Preez will mark their 50th appearances for the Bulls in Saturday’s Currie cup final.
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/ 12 September 2009
South Africa were still improving and can only get better heading into the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand, said captain John Smit.
It has been a dramatic week in SA rugby, which began with the best Super 14 match of the season.
Victor Matfield returns to lead the Bulls’ side for Friday’s Super 14 match against the Crusaders — and Bryan Habana is back on the wing.
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/ 13 February 2009
Although the Super 14 begins for most teams this year on Valentine’s Day, it can be assumed that there will be a minimum of love lost.
Last week’s rout of Argentina built confidence but the Springboks must bring their ‘A’ game to Newlands.
Buoyed by their historic win over the All Blacks, SA are confident their rookie hookers can get the job done in a Test against Australia on Saturday.
SA on Saturday beat Italy 26-0 in their one-off Test match at Newlands, but there is little doubt that the visitors will see this as a moral victory.
Victor Matfield will lead the Springboks against Italy in a one-off Test at Newlands on Saturday.
Springbok coach Peter de Villiers has made four changes to his team for the second Test against Six Nations champions Wales in Pretoria on Saturday.
Six Nations champions Wales will be looking to match everything the Springboks throw at them in the next fortnight when the teams meet in a two-Test series. But coach Warren Gatland said he was expecting no miracles from his injury-depleted squad that arrived in South Africa on Friday morning.
The nature of Test rugby is that it tends to run in four-year cycles, centred on the mammoth spectacle of the World Cup. The Springboks face the next three-and-a-half years as World Cup defending champions, a lofty pedestal that has proven very difficult to defend in the past.
JP Pietersen’s lack of form in the Super 14 season has cost him a place in the Springbok squad that was named in Somerset West on Wednesday. The Sharks’ World Cup-winning wing failed to score a try in the 2008 series after he finished the 2007 Super 14 season as the leading try scorer.
Springbok captain John Smit joined the Springbok training session in Stellenbosch on Monday morning just hours after stepping off the plane from France, where he had been playing for Top 14 club Clermont. The arrival of Smit was greeted with great relief by Springbok coach Peter de Villiers. ”We could not do our planning fully without him,” De Villiers explained.
The South African Rugby Union (Saru) announced on Friday it had lifted its restriction on the number of overseas-based players eligible to play for the Springboks. In a statement, Saru said that new Springboks coach Peter de Villiers coach would now be able to pick as many foreign-based players as he liked.
Peter de Villiers said on Wednesday that South African rugby players who ply their trade abroad must be made to realise that it remains a privilege to play for the Springboks. The Springbok coach was airing his views on the controversial issue of calling up overseas-based players for Springbok duty.
Springbok captain John Smit will be released from national duty to fulfil his commitments to French club Clermont, SA Rugby announced on Wednesday. Smit would return to Clermont on June 15 to play in the French Top 14 semifinals on June 21 and the final on June 28 if necessary, SA Rugby said in a statement.
Isma-eel Dollie as one of a few lesser surprises in the Springbok training squad of 42 members that was named on Saturday night. The new Springbok coach, Peter de Villiers, has included a number of players who are not regulars for their Super 14 franchises or who had limited opportunities because of injury this season.
It looks like the closely fought endgame of the Super 14 might turn Saturday’s announcement of the 45-man Springbok squad into something of a damp squib. Springbok coach Peter de Villiers will want to avoid disrupting the semifinal preparations of the Sharks and Stormers and will postpone naming players from those squads.
New Springbok coach Peter de Villiers is spoilt for choice ahead of the Springboks’ first Test of the year, against Six Nations champions Wales on June 7 in Bloemfontein. De Villiers, who took over from World Cup-winning coach Jake White at the beginning of the year, names his first South Africa squad on Saturday.
South African rugby coach Peter de Villiers said on Wednesday he is to name a national training squad of up 45 players for the forthcoming international season. De Villiers, who took over the reigns from Jake White in January this year, is expected to include Europe-based players John Smit (Clermont), Butch James (Bath) and Victor Matfield (Toulon) in the squad.
Victor Matfield, Bulls captain when they won the Super 14 last year, will be back for the Blue Bulls when the Currie Cup season starts, and will therefore be eligible for the Springboks. The Blue Bulls on Thursday night announced that Matfield had signed a contract with them to return ”home”. The contract becomes effective on July 1 and ends on October 31 2011.
British rugby club Northampton Saints boss Jim Mallinder has refused to be drawn on speculation that he is on the verge of luring South Africa’s World Cup-winning lock forward Victor Matfield to Franklin’s Gardens. Matfield was man of the match in last year’s World Cup final that saw South Africa beat England.
Bulls loose forward Pedrie Wannenburg will become the most capped Bulls player in Super rugby when he takes the field against the Western Force in Perth on Friday. Wannenburg, who was selected as flank alongside Wikus van Heerden, will surpass Victor Matfield’s record of 77 matches for the franchise.
Frederic Michalak is an anomaly in the migration patterns, the maverick flyhalf the sole French player moving to South Africa to play while many Boks head the other way. It now seems almost voguish that every French rugby team have at least a couple of South Africans on their books.
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/ 15 February 2008
South African rugby will enjoy an auspicious season this year. We begin the year as the envy of the rugby-playing nations, champions of both the world and the Super 14. Even the internecine wrangling for power in the South African Rugby Union (Saru) has failed to dim that envy.
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/ 14 February 2008
The new Super 14 season, which begins on Friday, could help determine whether South Africa’s dominance of world rugby was a one-year wonder. South Africa provided both teams in last year’s Super 14 final — the Bulls beat the Sharks — and the Springboks went on to win the sixth World Cup in France.
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/ 13 February 2008
South Africa’s five Super 14 teams will have to produce some of their best rugby yet if they are to retain the title they so famously won, for the first time, last year. After years of being denied the title by the Australian and New Zealand teams, South Africa’s Northern Bulls finally went all the way in 2007.
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/ 12 February 2008
The Blue Bulls have refused to allow South Africa lock Bakkies Botha to join French second division Toulon. Ian Schwartz, media spokesperson for the Blue Bulls, said on Monday that Botha would not be released from his contract. ”We had no option but to decline his request,” Schwartz was quoted as saying.