Nienaber explains why he had player in coaches box against Ireland

Springboks head coach Jacques Nienaber has explained why he had No.8 Duane Vermeulen in the coaches box during the South Africa’s 13-8 defeat to Ireland at the Stade de France last weekend.

The former Ulster back row was spotted in the box alongside Nienaber, Rassie Erasmus and Felix Jones, leading some to question what the exact reason for his presence was.

“I can’t say if he’s preparing for the future,” said Nienaber when asked if Vermeulen was preparing for a future in coaching. “It’s not the first time that we have had a player in the box. It’s good for us as coaches to sometimes have a player [there], because they give us a different perspective of how our communication is within the team. They get a sense of the sometimes frustration that coaches are under in a coaches’ box. That grows them as a player.

“Our coaches’ meeting starts at seven in the morning – any player can join that. Let’s say it gets to something sensitive like team selection, we will excuse them from the meeting and have the internal discussion, but they are more than willing – from 2018 – to sit in coaches’ meeting as much as they want.

“Duane’s role; if you look back to 2019, the best way to describe it is a Francois Louw role. He’s a guy that can start, that can play a test match for you, but he’s also a guy that’s got a lot of experience and he adds his wealth of knowledge into the group.

“Not saying that he can’t start. Look at Francois Louw, the contribution he made in that semi-final for us, to get a penalty in the 76th minute.

“Big moments, big roles, been there before – he’s [Vermeulen’s] probably in that mould, but if there’s an injury and he has to start and play the whole game, he’s more than fit and good enough to do that.”]

Nienaber is happy to put the Ireland defeat behind them and show what they can do against Tonga.

“Let’s take the result out of the way – we all know that we need to get a win and a bonus point. So let’s park the result.

“We’ve got certain things that we have to rectify that we couldn’t get right against Ireland.

“In terms of our game plan, there are definitely some things that we will try a little bit differently in this game to see if it works.

“The result is very important but we need to fix that if we do get the opportunity to go into a quarter-final or knockout rugby. If we don’t fix those things we probably won’t last long in this competition.”