Siya Kolisi, the captain of the Springboks, mentioned that the victory against the All Blacks on Saturday felt destined to happen, despite the team needing to make a big comeback when they were behind 17-27 after 50 minutes of play.

The Bok captain, speaking at the post-match press conference even though the side of his face was swollen, said the game was very tough, but the team wouldn’t have it any other way.

He can understand how the visitors feel, as they have now lost two games in the Rugby Championship after losing their first game 30-38 to Argentina. The coaches prepared us, and we knew what to expect. We’ve experienced similar situations before, and we had to rise to the challenge.

We were aware of how tough the game would be. Sometimes, games like this are just destined to be difficult. We embraced the challenge and knew it would be tough, but it’s one of the top moments for us,” Kolisi said.

Coach Rassie Erasmus described how challenging it was after the All Blacks scored their third try. He said that at that moment, the Boks were focused on stopping them from scoring a bonus-point try.

The game started with the All Blacks scoring early, and the priority for the Boks was to prevent them from getting a bonus point. Coach Erasmus mentioned that the boys really got into the game and emphasized the importance of the Rugby Championship to the Springboks.

“We want to win it, but we will give some new guys a chance next week and hope they succeed. We know we are in a good position, but we won’t get too confident.
We will analyze this game, figure out why we struggled to move out of our half at times, and why we couldn’t take advantage of our opportunities,” Erasmus stated.

He praised the efforts of fullback Aphele Fassie and flyhalf Sacha Feinberg-Mgomezulu, as well as Pieter-Steph du Toit, who had to switch between three positions at times. He said Fassi did well and Sacha did too. He mentioned that Handre [Pollard] and Manie [Libbok] are still part of the team as they continue to build the squad.

He acknowledged that they could have easily lost the game. Sacha was emotional after the game. Pieter-Steph played multiple positions and even Ben-Jason gave him some rest. Nothing was said at half-time, the players discussed a few things and made plans.