The Sanlam Boland Cavaliers won’t let their huge 80-0 victory over the Leopards go to their heads as they prepare for one of the biggest games of their SA Cup campaign thus far, against the Airlink Pumas.
The Cavas will tackle the unbeaten Airlink Pumas on Saturday at 15:00 at Boland Stadium in Wellington. According to Boland head coach Hawies Fourie, his side must make a substantial step-up if they want to topple the SA Cup log leaders.
Fourie watched his side score 12 tries against the Leopards. Boland bagged a bonus point, boosting their points difference and consolidating their fourth place in the SA Cup standings.
Two more victories and a few favourable results elsewhere over the coming weekends will see the Cavas qualify for the SA Cup semi-finals and also bag promotion to the Currie Cup Premier Division.
However, Fourie wants to see a near-perfect performance from his side this coming weekend and says: “Yes, we are satisfied with the performance against the Leopards. I feel in the first half we could’ve scored at least two or three more tries; we didn’t execute that well and made a few mistakes – handling errors and so on.
“We can still improve on that [because] the Leopards didn’t play well, and on defence they made a lot of mistakes that made it quite easy for us to score against them.
“This coming weekend against the Pumas will be a totally different story because they are a far more physical team, well-drilled and currently on top of the log as they haven’t lost a game thus far in the competition.
“It will be a big test for us.”
Meanwhile, Fourie had some good news on the injury front after flyhalf Ashlon Davids had to be stretchered off the field in the second half with a suspected serious neck injury. At one stage during the game, Boland also had to play with just 12 players as a few more players hobbled off injured while they still had a player in the sin-bin.
But of how some of the players were asked to leave the pitch as a precaution and Davids’ neck blow not being too big of a concern, Fourie says: “On Ashlon’s injury we will get some more clarity [in the week], it doesn’t look too serious and hopefully he will recover quickly.
“The fact that he was stretchered off the field was just as a precaution, as it looked as if his neck got [seriously] injured, but today [on Monday] it looked as if it was not that serious, and we will know about his availability later this week.
“Near the end of the game, we also had a few players mainly going down with cramps, and we decided to take them off as we were already in the lead by more than 70 points.”
Fourie also praised his players for not letting in any points after the Cavas were reduced to 12 players, as the Sanlam Boland Cavaliers continued to dominate the contest.
“It told me a lot about the character of this team,” says the Cavaliers boss. “I am glad we could keep them out and ensure they did not score any points.
“The 80-point difference we won by is probably going to play a huge role later on in this competition and in determining who qualifies for the semi-finals and who does not.”