Springbok assistant coach Deon David’s wants the Springbok’s lineout play to evolve in 2025 and can’t wait to get the International season going. The current World Cup Champions have a busy and rather tough schedule this year with 15 tests coming up (1 will still be confirmed against Japan).
Davids who deals with the lineouts, is looking forward to working with some new younger locks and some old returning faces. Last year the Boks had a mini-lock crisis with so many injuries but somehow still managed to keep it together.
Telecomasia Sport had the opportunity to chat with Deon Davids, to get some insight on the Springbok lineout play and various other aspects of their game.
Last year we had a couple of challenges when it came to our locks and hookers as well, injuries really hit us hard but this year in 2025 we should be in a better situation.
A lot of the Injured guys are on the right track now, Lood De Jager and Franco Mostert will be back and are doing really well in Japan.Our local South African guys like Salmaan Moerat and Ruan Nortje have taken their opportunities, Salman has been physical and has picked up things nicely, while Eben Etzebeth has come back and is gaining form.
We are really fortunate with the depth at lock and we are looking forward to having all our available locks on the park. I feel our locks handled the pressure well and we want to evolve from a technical point as well. So plenty of positives for our locks and lineout play.
Our Coaching team has already done all the analysis, reviewed our game and looked at our opposition we will face this year. We are all well prepared and look forward to a great season ahead.
Lineout development and growth
Last year we saw the Bok lineout play being very creative, intelligent and we saw plenty of variations being tried. Cheslin Kolbe a backline player, threw the ball in at the lineout. We saw quick throw-ins to speed up play and various driving shift mauls.
Furthermore, the lineout was ball thrown to the middle and then thrown to front (while in the air) and then a maul formed from that. This was really out of the box thinking and surprised the opposition at times. It clearly indicates there is huge growth in the Bok lineout play and there will be a greater expectation to evolve this season.
One thing is for certain, the Bok lineout will never become one dimensional. They will always look to evolve. The opposition on the other hand will always look to counter the driving maul. One particular reason is because, it has been one of the biggest weapons in all Springbok teams over the years. The driving maul is often used to score tries or put the forward pack in a very dominant position.
Deon David’s Coaching view
We good some good results with my lineout work, with the maul, some teams got clever in terms of how they stop our mauls and we did great analysis on that so that we can understand what challenges and threats we will go through this year.
We always look to stay a step ahead of our opponents, and the main goal is always to get better because teams bring so much different tactics in order to counter our lineout play and in particular our driving mauls.
So it becomes imperative for us to always become creative and this will present an opportunity to do your lineout play more effectively and it’s nice to share some ideas to the players and also to get some ideas from the players for us from a coaching view point because lineout play always links to attack or links to defense and so it’s good to have those conversations to ensure we spot on with our lineout game. It’s really a massive part of our game. My overall line for my boys in 2025 is to achieve dominance.
Tony Brown factor and other aspects of their game
Last year we witnessed the Boks develop a key aspect of their game and that was the attacking play.
Tony Brown and his attacking mindset has been a key to us developing our attack, he has definitely added something different and our x factor players are loving it under him.
The width to width play has never been seen like this in the past and often our players were boxed in or never given a full opportunity to express themselves properly, Tony is now giving them a license to have a go in the attacking structure.
Also it’s great to have Jerry Flannery run the defense for us and he has filled the big shoes from Jaque Nienaber and he has helped us nicely in that department and I’m sure he will have a big role this year for us, no doubt.
Springboks will say goodbye to some old veterans and continue to grow player pool in 2025
This year we will see some old faces most likely play their final season in a Bok jersey. Willie Le Roux will get to his milestone of 100 caps and then will be worked out by head coach Rassie Erasmus.
Tighthead prop Frans Malherbe has back issues and we will probably see him go out as well. Other experienced players that will also most likely be featuring this year for the last time or may not, will be Makazole Mampimpi, Vincent Koch, Faf de Klerk, Bongi Mbonambi, Trevor Nyakane and Cobus Reinach.
The remaining aging players like Captain Siya Kolisi , Eben Etzebeth, Pieter Steph Du Toit , Damian De Allende , Kwagga Smith will definitely be managed with game time , training workload and conditioning for the next 2 years. This is to ensure; they can make it to the 2027 World Cup in Australia.
In terms of the player pool, the Boks used over 50 players last year and blooded some new youngsters. Expect the same thing, in fact Coach Rassie could surprise us, by blooding even more players.
Players that could feature and make their debuts are the likes of, Neethling Fouche, Vincent Tshituka , Juarno Augustus, Suleiman Hartzenberg , Ethan Hooker and Jurenzo Julius to name a few.
Players that made their debut last year and are still thin on caps, will need more development and growth this year. They will be, Edwill van Der Merwe, Cameron Hanekom, Ruan Nortje, Morne Van Der Berg, Jordan Hendrikse , Jan Hendrik Wessels , Ruan Venter and Jaco Grobelaar.
One other big issue is the captaincy. They will need to build another back-up Captain to Siya Kolisi. Last year, Salmaan Moerat was captain on 3 occasions and he will hope to get other chances.
The other options will be Phepsi Buthelezi who has been captain for the Junior Boks or Sacha Feinberg Mngomezulu , who also has captained at Junior Bok level.
