Mental fatigue a concern
Jacques van der Westhuyzen hopes the Boks aren’t a spent force – physically and mentally, by the time the quarter-finals are staged.
|||A massive emphasis was placed on conditioning before the Springboks departed for England last Friday and while many of the players have said they are in the best physical shape of their careers one can only hope that mentally they’re also at the level one would hope for going into a World Cup.
The Bok squad got to England at the weekend having spent the best part of the last two months in each other’s company – working on their conditioning, training and playing five Test matches, starting with the outing against the World XV. During the Super Rugby competition, coach Heyneke Meyer also hosted two training camps.
In this time the players bonded and became like brothers, according to a number of the men who’ll be running out for the Boks over the next few weeks – a maximum of seven if the Boks manage to get to the last week and the final. It’s a helluva long time to be living out of a suitcase, boarding a bus to training and back and moving from one city to the next.
Now, add all those weeks spent together before boarding the plane last Friday – the week of training in Joburg and the weeks spent in Durban – and you realise the Boks will not only have to be up for it physically over the coming weeks, but mentally, too.
It can only be hoped that the Boks aren’t drained and mentally flat by the time the knockout stages arrive. That’s of course if they’re also not out on their feet, some of them anyway, following all the training and conditioning they’ve been doing.
At least some of the players – many of them key men in Meyer’s first choice XV – haven’t trained as much as the others so some of them will at least be fresh for longer.
The excitement of being at a World Cup will carry the players through the opening game this weekend and potentially in game two and three – or, let’s at least hope so because those will be the Boks’ biggest challenges, against Samoa and Scotland – but by the time the match against the US arrives and then the quarter-finals the Boks will have to find inspiration from somewhere to keep going.
The Rugby World Cup is a ridiculously long tournament, with the teams having all arrived in England last weekend, and finishing on the weekend of October 31 – that’s seven weeks. Now, it doesn’t matter that the players are professionals and are used to it, put anyone in the same group of people for that long and there are going to be challenges. Everyone needs to “get away from it” at some stage, but there isn’t that luxury during a seven-week trip. Let’s just hope the Boks aren’t a spent force – physically and mentally – by the time the quarter-finals are staged. - The Star