Durban — The Springbok Women’s team will not go down without a fight when they tackle World Cup favourites England in their final Pool C match on Saturday in New Zealand.
Few will argue that England are firm favourites and that is not even disputed by Springbok Women forwards coach Eddie Myners.
“We did target the Fiji game for a win when we planned our campaign and we were hoping to get at least a bonus point from the matches against France and England,” said Myners.
“Things have not worked out for us, and it is disappointing, but we still have one more go at it. We now need to beat England to survive into the next round. Stranger things have happened, and we are certainly not going down without a fight.”
The match against the Red Roses was pencilled in months ago and plans were made for this encounter – in fact, the South Africans even had two training sessions against the English when they were on tour to Europe last November.
“Yes, we had two training sessions against them and it was clear then that we needed to be much sharper a year later,” said Myners.
“We have stepped up in performance and in attitude since then. We have been excited about this fixture for a while now.
“We want to measure ourselves against the best at this World Cup and there is no better than England. Why should we be despondent if this is exactly what every player wanted, to be measured against the best team in the world?”
The coach confirmed that the team will be announced on Thursday morning and that hooker Lindelwa Gwala will miss the clash.
“She is injured and that is a pity as she was really playing well for us. We are certainly going to miss her presence in the scrums, but this injury gives an opportunity to the next player to prove herself,” he said.
“We obviously made plans on how we want to tackle England and which players we need for the match. We have a squad of 32, and some of them have not played yet. We will need a group of 23 players who would want to leave nothing out there, who would want to play as if it were their very last opportunity in the green and gold.”
IOL Sport