De Klerk looks forward to tussle with Perenara

aron Smith may be missing from the All Blacks, but his Springbok halfback rival Faf de Klerk says TJ Perenara will be just as strong in Saturday’s Fortinet Rugby Championship Test in Townsville.

Going into the 100th Test between the two sides, the All Blacks are one win away from securing the Championship title, but de Klerk believes South Africa can make life difficult if they can deliver an accurate performance.

“TJ has several Test caps, and he’s a special player. They play a similar style but also add their own spice. So, it’s going to be great to play against him.

“He’s a huge threat with his running game, so we’ll need to do some homework on him before the game,” he said.

After their two losses to Australia, de Klerk said they knew they needed to be better and step up their game.

“We want to rectify the errors we made and deliver a performance people can be proud of.

“Our main focus is to get back on track in this competition and to hopefully force ourselves into contention to still win it,” he said.

De Klerk said their last four matches against the All Blacks had been tight, so they knew how the All Blacks wanted to play and how they would try to expose the Springboks’ weaknesses.

“In our last match against them [at the 2019 Rugby World Cup] they kicked two kicks that we didn’t handle well, and got turnover ball and scored. So, we know how vital it will be to kill the loose ball, and to ensure that we don’t concede turnovers because that’s where they flourish,” he said.

“Their counter-attack is one of their big scoring methods, so they are very dangerous when one makes mistakes.

“We know when we attack, we cannot make errors at all, and if we give them easy knock-ons, we need to kill that ball because that is when they come alive.

“They are also dangerous if they get off-loads…so when it comes to our kicking game, we need to shut them down,” he said.