White senses new spring in Boks' steps

South Africa coach Jake White admits he is excited at the prospect of seeing his new-look team play for a second time but he expects a backlash from Australia in Saturday’s Tri-Nations opener.

The Springboks, the defending champions, start as narrow favourites for the match due to their impressive home record and their comprehensive 33-20 win over the Wallabies at Ellis Park last weekend.

White, who knows the Australians are unlikely to play badly two weeks in a row, says he is confident his players will be up to the challenge of the occasion at Loftus Versfeld.

And the Bok coach is pleased that his side are not an unknown factor now and is looking forward to seeing them take a step up in the coming weeks.

“The positive is also that our players can also see what they can do now against a side like that,” White said.

“They will expect it a bit more now because we played such a different style of rugby, but I’m looking forward to the fact that the players are quite keen to play in the same way that they did.

“Now they are a lot more confident than last weekend, where they were nervous. They are likely to be just as nervous this weekend but if they can start well…”

White is delighted with the way things had gone over the past week and thinks his side can develop into the best in the world.

“I’m excited about this team. Six, seven, eight are all excellent ball players and there is a lot of excitement about this backline, once we get the combination going where we can get the inter-linking play between our forwards and our backs to be perfect,” he added.

“One aspect of the game which was exciting last week was the amount of offloads we made in the tackle. That’s purely because the players were playing with each other and complimenting each other.

“We are fully aware that this is a new start and a new competition. What happened in the past is irrelevant and part of the challenge of our team is to find the intensity and excitement and energy level that we played with last weekend.

“If we can get that week in and week out, with the kind of talent we have, we could beat anybody on any day.”

The game will be played in front of a sell-out crowd of 52,000.

The Boks then face New Zealand in Cape Town next weekend and will need to win both games if they are to have a chance of defending the title they won last year.