The next job at hand is the most important and that is to try and beat Spain in Madrid on Saturday, according to Springbok Women prop Babalwa Latsha, who said on Monday the focus for the week is firmly on the Test against their hosts at Estadio Nacional Universidad Complutense Stadium and nothing else.
“The match against Spain is all that matters now and this whole week is geared towards that”, said the 21 Test cap forward as the team started their week with a training session at a local rugby club in the Spanish capital.
“The next job lies ahead, and the next challenge is Spain. We played them last year when they came to South Africa and we won both matches. Now it is our turn to play in Spain and they will be determined to change that result.
“Having played three of the top four sides in the world in our last four matches we are now facing a team that is also ranked outside of the top ten in the world. It should make for a very competitive match and one that we are looking forward to after the learnings from last weekend.”
Latsha said the Springbok Women have already reflected on their performance against Canada last Saturday.
“Last weekend was a first opportunity this year to get a look-in on where we are as a team and what standard we were at,” she said.
“The fact that we took on the fourth ranked team in the world made the task even more demanding, but we came out of that with a good understanding of where we are and now have a baseline to work from for Spain.
“There was a lot of activity in Europe with regards to women’s rugby with the Six Nations also starting and that added to our perspective.
“We saw that scorelines can easily become bloated on the day and one side can score big, like Canada against us and England against Scotland, but it is how well you recover from that in your next match that will be important.
“Against Canada we took a heavy blow early in the game and we had to fight on for the rest of the match with one woman down. I think we showed a lot of fight in that effort.”
The team’s discipline was another plus, despite the early red card to Catha Jacobs for head contact during an attempted tackle. They only conceded 10 penalties, which is much better than the 2022 average of 15 per game.
“We realised that we need to be better in that area as well and it is pleasing that we managed to cut down our penalty count,” added Latsha.
“We were still able to dominate the scrum and even gained a scrum penalty despite playing with only seven forwards. We were not so great in other areas though and will work on it this week. That said, we are not going to neglect our scrumming, it remains a strength and we will keep on working to improve that.”
The Springbok Women won 10 of their 12 scrums and had a 80% tackle completion rate in the game.
Interim coach Louis Koen will announce his team to take on Spain on Tuesday. Mary Zulu, Danelle Lochner and Aseza Hele, who all left the field injured against Canada, are expected to be in contention, while the judicial result following the red card to Jacobs will determine her availability.
Issued by SA Rugby Communications
Photo by Shaun Roy/BackpagePix
