Jake White believes that England can recover from their various setbacks to pose a challenge to the Boks on Saturday. “I’m sure they’ll bounce back. They’ve had a difficult week with all the disruptions to their preparation, with a number of players not training and three or four guys being ruled out of this Test. It also can’t be easy to lose two props ahead of such a big game.â€
“It is great to get a result like this over a nation like England since we will be playing them at the World Cup,†he said. “There was a lot of expectation on us to perform, especially since England had suffered all those setbacks due to the stomach virus. The South Africans’ performance in the Super 14 would have lifted those expectations as well.
“I’d like to keep this team together for next week. We showed in batches how we can play, and when we played badly, it was more of a case of running away from each other, so keeping a team together can obviously improve that.â€