Springboks sweat on Mapimpi harm in wake of Tonga win

AFP

South Africa will ship wing Makazole Mapimpi for scans on a fracture to his cheekbone within the wake of Sunday’s 49-18 victory over Tonga that took the defending champions to the brink of a Rugby World Cup quarter-final place.

Should they progress, it might be with out the 2019 World Cup winner after he clashed heads with tackler Augustine Pulu in an incident that was reviewed by the Television Match Official, however not sanctioned with a yellow card.

“Makazole has a fracture of his cheekbone, so he will go for specialist scans to determine the severity of it,” Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber mentioned after the seven-try win.

Better news for Nienaber was the return of flyhalf Handre Pollard, who performed 50 minutes in his first check for 13 months. Pollard had featured for less than half-hour for his membership Leicester Tigers since May after recovering from a calf drawback.

“He will get better with more game time, he was solid,” Nienaber mentioned. “His ball carries were decisive, in defence he level-changed well and put some proper shoulder into his tackles. His off-the-ball work was good, as was his kicking game, both going for poles and in general play.”

The Boks will not know if they’ve a quarter-final place till Scotland meet Ireland in Paris subsequent Saturday, nevertheless it appears seemingly they are going to progress from Pool B, which might imply a two-week break earlier than their knockout stage fixture.

Nienaber doesn’t thoughts a while away from the sport and mentioned it was much like once they lifted the trophy in Japan 4 years in the past.

“We also finished our pool quite early and we had a 12 or 13-day preparation break before the quarter-final against Japan,” he mentioned.

“It is something we have done before and it worked well back then. We will give the players two to three days off, a mental break, and then start preparing and see what we can do better if we want to stay in this competition to the end.”

The Boks conceded three tries in a World Cup match for the primary time since their beautiful loss to Japan in 2015, a run of 17 video games, however Nienaber was not involved.

“From a defensive point of view, I am very proud. If you look at the attitude of the defence against a Tonga side that have got better as the tournament has progressed, it was there and the boys put in a big shift. Sometimes you just have to applaud the opposition.”