Matfield awaits his fate
Victor Matfield is adamant he still has a role to play as a player in the Boks winning the World Cup.
|||Springbok rugby’s most capped player, Victor Matfield, is adamant he still has a role as a player in the Boks winning the World Cup, despite Eben Etzebeth and Lood de Jager flourishing as a second-row partnership in his absence with a hamstring injury.’
The 38-year-old yesterday said he felt he had recovered from the recurrence of the injury that kept him out of most of the Rugby Championship and that he is ready to play against Wales in Saturday’s quarter-final at Twickenham.
“While injured I have been working behind the scenes helping Lood and Eben with the lineouts and I am very pleased at how well they have gone but, to be honest, as a player I want to get back on the field in whatever role the coach wants for me. But that is his decision, and I will back the coach and the team in whatever is necessary for South Africa to win the World Cup.”
Matfield said he has been immensely frustrated having to play a passive role in the Boks’ recovery from the Japan loss after he was injured half an hour into the second game against Samoa.
“The player in you just wants to get on the field and make things right but I have equally been pleased that I have been able to contribute on the training field,” Matfield said. “Lood is a very quick learner, he is an intelligent guy.
“Eben has been in the team for a while and we know what he can do and Lood has had a brilliant year, be it in general play or calling the lineouts,” Matfield said. “Forwards coach Johann van Graan and I have been working hard with him, and you have seen the response.”
Matfield magnanimously added that Pieter-Steph du Toit should not be underestimated when the coach makes his call on the second-row challenge against Wales.
“It is for Heyneke to decide whether I should be in the team, or on the bench, or in the stands,” Matfield said. “He knows what I can do but I have told him I will accept whatever decision he makes as long as the team wins, even if I have to eat humble pie from the sidelines.
“Going into the quarter-finals, everybody is under pressure and it might just suit us that we have been playing under the pressure of elimination since the day we lost to Japan,” Matfield said “Now everybody is in the same boat that we have been for three weeks. We are used to it and the best thing for the Boks is for us to keep being told that we are not going to make it.”
Matfield said that the more the Boks are written off, the better.
“It suits our mentality. We thrive when we are the underdogs,” he said. “If Wales want to say they do not fear us, that is great. It suits us. We love being written off.”
Wales captain Sam Warburton told the press after his team had somehow manufactured an 11th straight defeat to Australia that his team knew how to beat the Boks. They had nearly won in Nelspruit last June and then did beat the Boks last November in Cardiff.
“We have been hearing from Wales for the last six years that they know how to beat us, and yet they have done it once, when we had an under-strength team (last November),” Matfield said. “So it helps us that they think they are going to beat us because we have grown used to pressure and how to respond to it... so Wales are helping us maintain the mindset we need to keep right the way through to winning the World Cup.” - Cape Argus