The Springbok Women’s rugby team want to scrum and maul Spain into submission when coach Swys de Bruin’s side plays in their first official Test match of the 2025 season this coming weekend.
The South African ladies tackle Spain in Elche on Saturday, and the team are currently staying at the Bonalba Golf Resort in Alicante, where they have been preparing for their opening match of the international season.
Saturday’s match will also give De Bruin and his assistant coaches a first look at how their overall preparations for this year’s Women’s Rugby World Cup in England have gone.
Power and Panache
And one of the departments that Springbok Women’s scrum coach Laurian Johannes-Haupt says she expects to see firing is the set-piece she is mainly responsible for as it will allow the exciting backs to cause chaos on attack.
We are certainly a set-piece team, and we want to remain prominent and dominant in that area, but we also want to spice it up and add more to our play than just scrums and mauls, as successful as it is for us.
This match will be about a solid foundation, and we will target the set piece, but more so because we want to give the backs the ball to run with. If we provide the platforms for them to launch from, they will have ample opportunity to finish.
I feel our defence has been reliable as well, and we are working to add some attacking flair to our effort.
Spain are no push-overs
Johannes-Haupt, however, warns that the Bok Women will do well not to underestimate their Spanish counterparts, although the South Africans have beaten their European counterparts in their only two meetings thus far.
According to Johannes-Haupt, they will face a better-prepared Spanish outfit a third time around as the hosts have already played and won four games this season – moving them up to 13 th in the World Rugby rankings, with the Springbok Women occupying the 12th position.
They have been together for five weeks now and had four wins so far, so their improvement is real.
They will come in well prepared, while we are only starting our season. That said, we have had several camps back home where we worked on a few aspects and variety in our game, and we would like to implement that.
De Bruin names his team to face Spain on Wednesday.
