Africa-Press – South-Africa. With the Springboks’ first Test series of the year against Wales just a month away, a group of players will join up to take part in the first week of a planned three-week preparation camp in Pretoria starting on Sunday.
The start of the preparation camp will only include a handful of players as the Stormers, Sharks, and Bulls contest the quarter-finals of the United Rugby Championship (URC).
For that reason, Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber will only announce his team later in June.
Selected local players will also be invited to join the preparation camps as their respective franchises’ URC campaigns end. The available players will participate in training sessions over the next three weeks.
The three-week preparation camp in Pretoria continues until Thursday, 23 June, before the Springboks move base to Johannesburg to prepare for the first Welsh test scheduled for Loftus Versfeld on Saturday, 2 July.
Following the Test series against Wales, the Springboks gather in Sabie, Mpumalanga, to kick off their preparations for the back-to-back Rugby Championship Tests against the All Blacks in Nelspruit and Johannesburg on Saturday, 6 and 13 August.
The Boks will then travel to Australia for two Tests and one in Argentina before wrapping up the Rugby Championship in Durban on Saturday, 24 September.
Nienaber was looking forward to hitting the ground running as preparations ramp up.
“After months of preparation by the coaches off the field, we are excited to finally return to the field and to put our learnings into practice,” he said.
“We will start our preparations with a group of invited available players to ensure that we can deliver quality training sessions, and as more players become available following their URC campaigns, they will join the squad.
“We also have to be cognisant of the fact that we are building towards the 2023 Rugby World Cup and that every training session and match we participate in needs to be in the back of our minds.”
Despite Welsh teams struggling in the URC, Nienaber believes they will provide staunch opposition.
“They [Wales] will be inspired to show what they can do in this series,” said Nienaber.
“One only has to look at the history books to see how close matches between these nations have been over the years, so we have to hit the ground running in July if we want to win the series and get the season off to the desired start.”
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