Interim coach Labeeb Levy wants Western Province to “make a statement” against the Pumas when the teams clash in Nelspruit on Friday.
WP lost to the Free State Cheetahs in the Currie Cup last week while defending champions, the Pumas, put 64 points and 10 tries past the Griffons. Both the Pumas and the Cheetahs have 25 log points after six rounds, but the men from Mpumalanga remain at the top of the standings by virtue of their superior points’ difference.
Province are 10 points back in fourth and speaking in a conference on Tuesday, a fired up Levy told reporters: “It’s an opportunity and a challenge to win up there; our team won up there last year in the load-shedding game when the lights went off.
“This is a newer team on our side, with different personnel to a degree, but we can’t go up there to fulfill a fixture – we have to salvage points and go for the win and, as they say, make a statement.
“There’s also a lot of players with a desire to go and play URC [Vodacom United Rugby Championship] and get their foot in [the door] at some point, so from a players’ perspective that need to want to step up and show they are better than Currie Cup, for lack of a better way of describing it.
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“They need to commit, travel and train well, and play well on match day. We can’t go up there thinking, ‘ag ja, just stop them here a bit’… no, we have to go for every single play. We’ve committed well at training but like I said last week, we need to convert that onto the field. We did part of that last week [against Cheetahs] and just didn’t win the game.
“It shows rugby’s cruel; we had a good week at training but no guarantee you’re going to have a good weekend. We need to be better; more clinical, more hungry, more in their face, more desire to go and score more tries ourselves.”
He tasked his troops with upsetting the Pumas’ ‘copy cat’ approach at Mbombela Stadium, with the Jimmy Stonehouse-coached team playing an attacking style similar to the men in blue-and-white hoops.
Levy added: “Pumas had a certain DNA and they’ve actually changed their brand a bit this year; they still have a good set piece, good scrum, like to maul off a box-kick … but they’ve given the ball a bit more air this year.
“They’ve scored some brilliant tries – they remind me of us when watching them, a different version of us, trying to spread the ball. It’s good for the game of rugby, and they have evolved from last year, definitely, and we’re looking at plans to neutralise their strengths we’ve seen to counter their current style.”
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