SABLES coach Peter de Villiers is not worried by the lack of available information on North African side Morocco as he prepares to take charge of his first test with Zimbabwe in the opening Rugby Africa Gold Cup match at Harare Sports Club on June 16.
BY DANIEL NHAKANISO
Zimbabwe will take on the Moroccans in an encounter they desperately need to win to set the tone for their campaign in the Rugby Africa Gold Cup which doubles as the qualifiers for the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
De Villiers, who is known for his meticulous planning and attention to detail when preparing for matches, has, however, hit a brick wall in his attempts at finding any video footage on his upcoming opponents.
Morocco, who have never played at the World Cup despite coming close to qualifying for the 1999 and 2007 editions, were last year promoted to the top tier after beating Ivory Coast 8-3 in the Rugby Africa Silver Cup final.
“That is the difficult part,” De Villiers said when asked if they had done their homework on their opponents.
“We have struggled to get some footage of Morocco, nobody seems to have anything on them, so that will just make me concentrate on how we want to play and shut all the doors for them.
“After this, all the games will be televised so that’s when we can start to look at the strengths and weaknesses of our competition, but for this one we just have to concentrate on what we want to do for 95% of the game. Going forward it will be 80% about us and 20% for our opponents.”
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The former Springboks coach, who is aiming to guide the Sables to their first Rugby World Cup tournament since 1991, said the lack of information on their opponents could actually be a blessing in disguise as it would allow them to focus on their own game.
“It can actually give us the edge on concentrating on what we want to do,” he said.
“That’s where sometimes we go wrong, because we end up concentrating too much on the opposition and then on the day they don’t do what we expect them to do, then we are found wanting.
“Although they might know something about us, they still have to stop us and that is our focus now to let them come.”
De Villiers also provided some insight into his team’s recent training camp in Pretoria where a Sables training squad lost two matches to the Under-19 and select sides of South African rugby franchise Blue Bulls.
Although his charges lost 41-21 to Bulls Under-19s and 38-7 to Bulls Select in practice matches at Loftus B Grounds, de Villiers is not panicking and believes they are on the right track.
“I think we achieved what we wanted to achieve there. it was a camp and we wanted to bring the guys up to speed and show them what we can achieve and how we can achieve it,” he said.
“We had two teams that we could try against. to me it worked perfectly except for the lots of handling errors that we made.
“It’s something that won’t happen easily again because the guys aren’t bad at controlling the ball, but in that game I think they were a bit worked up and they wanted to impress the coach to make the first XV for the first Test.
“So with all those things out of the way we will announce our team very early to the players so that everyone knows and they can be at ease.”
Zimbabwe must finish in the top two in the six-team Rugby Africa Gold Cup to have a chance of qualifying for the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan. If they win the continental title, they qualify automatically. If they finish second, they wil have another shot at the World Cup through a répechage playoff.