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Italy no pushovers
Thursday, November 19
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Springbok coach Peter de Villiers said he is expecting a tough encounter when his team faces Italy at the Stadio Friuli in Udine on Saturday.
Speaking at a press conference in the Northern Italian city after making four changes to the Bok starting XV that lost to France last weekend, De Villiers said the Italians had shown great improvements in recent seasons and were fast becoming a force to be reckoned with.
“The more experience they gain, the better they are becoming and they are able to compete with any team on the day,” De Villiers said.
“They have a very good pack of forwards and they showed in their match against New Zealand that they will be very competitive at scrum time.”
De Villiers confirmed the Springbok match 22 for Saturday, announcing four changes to the team that went down against France last weekend.
With Tendai Mtawarira and Victor Matfield being carefully managed, prop Wian du Preez, who willl make his Test debut, and lock Andries Bekker have been promoted to the starting line-up. Mtawarira and Matfield are on the bench.
Adriaan Strauss starts at hooker and Danie Rossouw starts on the flank in place of Bismarck du Plessis and Schalk Burger respectively. Whilst both Du Plessis and Burger were available for selection, they have been given more time to recover from injuries sustained against France.
Meanwhile, BJ Botha joined the squad in Udine on Thursday as cover for the injured CJ van der Linde and has been included on the bench.
De Villiers said it was great to be able to call on a player of Botha’s calibre in an emergency.
“We have lost almost two front rows and it is reassuring to know that there are players that we can call on to assist us,” De Villiers said.
There are two more uncapped players in the 22 with flank Jean Deysel and scrumhalf Francois Hougaard included on the bench.
“We feel that this is an ideal opportunity to test Jean and Francois at Test level and hopefully they will be able to make the step up,” he said.
The Bok training session at Udine Rugby Club was attended by a large crowd as well as substantial media contingent that has almost followed the team’s every move since it arrived in the city on Wednesday afternoon.
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It interesting to note tho, that when our injuries occurred, the players brought in as cover, came straight into the test 22 or were promoted to the test side after their performances in the mid-week games, and not the players included in the initial touring squad, point in case, Deysel, how he was not included in the 1st place is still a mystery to me but he's there now so thats all that matters, as well as CJ van de linde, BJ Botha, Wiaan du Preez, anyway the point im trying to make here is why weren't these players in the initial touring squad and why were others included in the touring squad when div clearly has no faith in them at test level, sure he is trying to blood youngsters but surely the likes of strauss, du preez, deysel deserve a chance and to gain some experience, they aren't exactly what you would call seasoned in test rugby??