Bok scrum wants the strength of…HU-MAN

Scrum-guru Daan Human was a bit disappointed that his Springbok pack could not take the All Blacks to the hawe (harbour) in last week’s 31-27 Rugby Championship win in Johannesburg.

In the famous Springboks Chasing the Sun 2 documentary, Human explained how he had built the Boks pack into one of the scariest packs to scrum against by making them scrum against each other to see ‘wie vat vir wie hawe toe’.

In the doccie Human said: “We test the players there. For some players the scrum sessions are tougher than the games, they look forward to the games.”

The Boks could, however, not put the All Blacks scrum in reverse gear at Ellis Park with Human pointing to the injury crisis at lock and selecting an untested starting second-row pair in Pieter-Steph du Toit and Ruan Nortje with Eben Etzebeth playing off the bench.

Of not having injured locks RG Snyman and Salmaan Moerat available and the gesukkel to druk the Kiwis, Human says: “We’ve got very versatile players in the squad who can play a lot of positions and I wouldn’t say it weakened our scrum.

“But we realise that guys haven’t scrummed as a combination together before. Yes, we realise that there are a lot of locks injured but we hope they get back soon.”

Human, however, knows the Kiwi pack is no pushover and says of how opposing scrum-guru Jason Ryan has made them tough: “The All Blacks have one of the best and most powerful scrums in the world, so although I felt we did alright there last weekend, we can certainly still improve.”

Meanwhile, Ryan is looking forward to the scrum battle when the Boks tackle the All Blacks at Cape Town Stadium on Saturday.

He says: “There’s a similar mindset between both packs that they want to scrummage – there are not a lot of games going on. Daan – who I know really well – prides himself in that area…”

Daily Voice