The Boks and England have triumphed three times each in their last six games, but three of the last four have gone the way of the South Africans.
With the Springboks having just a six day turnaround between their win over Scotland this past Sunday and their match against England on Saturday, coach Rassie Erasmus has admitted that it makes a big impact.
England played against the Wallabies at Twickenham last week Saturday, so have had a full week to prepare for the match at Twickenham on Saturday while not needing to travel, whereas the Boks have had to travel from Edinburgh to London, while also having just six days between the two games.
Turnaround time
At the Boks’ team announcement on Thursday, when asked if it makes a big difference to teams who have a seven day turnaround against one who had six, Erasmus explained that it does.
“It makes a massive difference. One team basically has two training days where you have to put all your departments through their paces,” said Erasmus.
“That’s why we picked the backline for England the previous week. Last week Thursday after they prepared the guys for Scotland they turned their heads to England and started analysing and preparing.
“You either have a training day less, or if you decide to have the same amount of training days you have a recovery day less. So it does have quite a big impact.”
Down to the wire
Although the Boks have had the wood over England in recent times, beating them three times out of four since the World Cup in 2019, between 2018 and the World Cup final win in Japan, it was England that had three wins from four.
It is thus always a tough encounter between the two and sometimes goes right down to the wire, like when England won 27-26 at Twickenham in 2021, or last year’s World Cup semifinal where the Boks won 16-15.
“England beat us three times out of four recently and we’ve only won three of the last six matches against them, so we have great respect for them, and we’ll certainly not underestimate them,” said Erasmus.
“As I said on Sunday, we will be facing a desperate England team that will give everything on Saturday, so the consistency in our player combinations will be vital for us to deliver the quality of the performance we would like to.
“It’s going to be vital for the players to gel quickly so hopefully we can start off strongly because we are expecting a full-out 80-minute battle.
“They are playing at home in front of a passionate home crowd, and we know they will give everything to turn their series around, so we believe it’s going to be a hard match until the final whistle.”
