Springbok captain Siya Kolisi is looking to return to winning ways when they meet Italy in their third Castle Lager Outgoing Tour match at Stadio Luigi Ferraris on Saturday afternoon.

In their last two games, Ireland and France, the top-ranked teams in the world, beat the Boks by only a few points each. Kolisi said that his team was determined to change their luck.

“We come off two tough games, which we lost,” said Kolisi.

“Our focus is completely on playing Italy. It’s a big game for us. We don’t want to go three games without a win. So we’ll show Italy the respect they deserve. We saw how they played in the last two games, so know what they can do.”

Kolisi added: “We’ll be playing for South Africa, for the people back at home. Playing to win the game is all that is on our minds right now. The most important thing is to make sure that we stand up tomorrow because Italy is a very good team.”

Kolisi said that the team had more motivation to turn their season around because the final Castle Lager Outgoing Tour Test against England next week will take place outside of the international window. This means that a few Boks players who live abroad will not be able to play.

“Some guys are going back to their clubs next week and this may be the only opportunity they get to play for the team again before the Rugby World Cup,” said the skipper. “So we want to prove ourselves in this game.”

Kolisi said that Italy was a big threat everywhere because they were good at set pieces, breakdown play, and had a backline with a lot of different skills.

“They have shown that they can play against any team at any time,” said Kolisi.

“Their set pieces are strong and their breakdown work is very good. They can scrum very well too and they have backs that can attack from any place at the field, so they’ve grown a lot as a team since we last played against them.

“I think sometimes teams don’t show them the respect they deserve, so we have done a lot of research on them and their individual players to see what they will bring to the game.”

Photo by Gerhard Duraan/BackpagePix