How Boks won brutal breakdown battle

Rookie Springbok loose forward Heinrich Brüssow feels that South Africa’s ability to play as a unit is what helped them secure a series-clinching 28-25 win over the British and Irish Lions in Pretoria at the weekend.

Jan de Koning, Rugby365 

Speaking, as the Boks started to look ahead to a possible 3-0 series whitewash with the third Test in Johannesburg on Saturday looming, Brüssow revealed how the players started feeding off each other’s energy in turning the second Test around at the weekend.

The 22-year-old flank, Brüssow, in only his third Test, said it was “brutal” at the breakdown, but the Boks started playing for each other and managed to match the physical approach from the tourists.

“Our confidence grew, as we started feeding off each other’s energy,” Brüssow said, adding: “If one player did something, the next felt he needed to make a contribution and that helped us turn things around.

“Everybody started playing to the game plan and the standards that were expected of us, so it really was a team effort,” he said, adding that the same will be required in the third and final Test in Johannesburg on Saturday.

He said it will be crucial, just as the Boks did in the second half in Pretoria, that the players work harder at staying on their feet and work harder at getting to their support.

Brüssow, who is likely to be back in the starting XV after Schalk Burger was handed an eight-week ban for eye gouging at the weekend, said he did not mind dropping back to the bench for the Pretoria Test.

The humble, and soft-spoken Cheetahs flank, said he was just honoured to be part of the Bok set-up and didn’t feel he had any rights to a starting spot – despite a near man-of-the-match performance in his first start in the opening Test of the series in Durban earlier this month and another major contribution in Pretoria at the weekend.

“You always have respect for the man in the seat and Schalla [Schalk Burger] has been one of the top flanks in the world for a few years now,” Brüssow said, in reference to starting on the bench.

“It was an honour for me to represent the Boks in that position while he [Burger] was injured and I was just happy to get another chance off the bench and to be part of this win.”

Brüssow also spoke of how hard it is going to be, again, in the third Test in Johannesburg, where he expects the battle at the breakdown to be just as brutal as the first two tests.

“It was very physical,” Brüssow said, adding: “The teams from the United Kingdom always play a physical game up front.

“They did well and it was indeed very physical, but in the last half-an-hour the game [in Pretoria] turned and we got the upperhand.

“We started cleaning better and got better quality possession. The first half wasn’t a case of us not playing good rugby, we just didn’t get good quality possession and we also made a few errors that cost us when we did have the ball.”

The Bok team for the third Test will be announced on Tuesday and Brüssow is expected to be in the starting XV – his second start of the series, after initially missing out on selection for the wider Bok squad – with the eight-week ban of Burger and Rossouw likely to be ruled out through concussion.

Brüssow made his Bok debut when coming off the bench against England at Twickenham in November and then had his first start in Durban.