Boks are at an all-time low
“You learn in every game you play, but there are huge lessons in games that are as disappointing as Saturday’s loss.”
|||Birmingham - It is time for the Boks to man up, take responsibility and do the jersey proud, says flanker Francois Louw, who says the players are “heart-broken to have let so many people down”.
“There is a lot of emotion in the squad right now and self-belief can be vulnerable when you are shocked the way we were by Japan, but it is up to us to channel our feelings into preparing for the game of our lives (on Saturday). We have to beat Samoa and take grasp of our destiny in this tournament again.”
The wounded Boks can still win their Pool if they go unbeaten over the next three weeks.
“Our backs are against the wall. We are down but not out, there are three games ahead of us - Samoa, Scotland and the US - and we won’t be underestimating anybody, although I don’t think we ever did.”
Many would beg to differ, and Louw is honest enough to admit the Boks were taught a painful lesson.
“You learn in every game you play, but there are huge lessons in games that are as disappointing as Saturday’s loss,” he said. “There is a massive task ahead of us but the tournament is still in our hands. We can either feel sorry for ourselves or pull ourselves together and grasp this Pool by the scruff of its neck and go through to the quarters.”
But will the players truly believe they can become the first team to win the World Cup after losing the first game?
“Obviously a defeat of this magnitude can make a team vulnerable in terms of morale and belief,” Louw said. “But we need to pull together, we know what needs to be done, we have been together a long time and are a tight group. I honestly believe we have the resilience to deflect the negativity that is coming our way and bounce back. There is lot of expectancy, and so there should be, and a loss is not good enough, especially when you have trained so hard to establish immediate momentum and instead hit an embarrassing stumbling block.”
It will be a miracle if the Boks can find form after having lost five of their last six Tests. Louw said his team would draw on the positives from the good rugby they have played over the last four years, and even from the close defeats to the All Blacks and Wallabies a few months ago.
“We have to establish confidence,” he said. “We will remind ourselves of the great brand of rugby we have played at times. We know we have played some exceptional rugby in recent years and we know we can beat any team in the world. We are not bad players overnight.”
Louw denied that the Boks did not take Japan seriously enough and it was not treated as a ‘final’ as promised.
“That was not the case. We did regard it very much as part of our mantra of ‘seven finals in seven weeks’. When you are a Springbok, every single Test is important. And in a World Cup even more so because you want to give yourself an opportunity to win as soon as possible, and keep winning to speed up momentum into the play-offs. You want to top your Pool and give yourself the best possible draw for the quarter-finals.”
The Boks have still not been able to fully explain why they lost, and Louw says there is no single reason, and a lot had to do with it being “Japan’s day”.
“It is a good question why we lost. I don’t think we ‘under-cooked’ it at all. It just did not happen for us on the day.
“We were not over-confident. What makes it such a good sport is that anything can happen on the day.”
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