Nienaber: I owe players my win bonus
SPRINGBOK head coach Jacques Nienaber said he owed his players his win bonus after they dug him out of a hole by winning the second Lions Test and forcing a decider in Cape Town next week.
The Boks rolled to a 27-9 victory to level the series with a brutal second- half charge inspired by their beefy pack.
Nienaber said: ‘ Our leadership group was fantastic. I should give them my win bonus. I felt more of a facilitator than a coach. The supporters were unbelievable. They were at our hotel from 2pm on Saturday, and on the way to the stadium, the roads were full of our supporters. I am so happy we could do it today, it was for them as much as it was for us.’
Nienaber was convinced t he referee Ben O’Keeffe made the right call not to send off Cheslin Kolbe for a dangerous tackle on
Conor Murray, settling instead for a yellow card.
‘ It was the right call,’ he said. ‘They followed the process to a T.’
And captain Siya Kolisi was delighted that his Boks delivered under pressure, as they did at the World Cup in 2019.
‘It was huge,’ he said. ‘We knew what we didn’t do (in the first Test). It was the same pressure we felt at the World Cup, but now it is a bit more because this only happens every 12 years. So we had to go back to what works for you, as a person. I pray, I read my devotions. That’s how I handle my pressure.
‘As a team, we go back to what we know with the systems, the structures of the team. Every individual looks at what they need to do. That’s what we went to because you can’t control everything, but what we can apply on the field, that’s what we focused on.
‘We are going to go again. We are just going to try and do what we did today even harder.’