Denver Wannies: SA hungry and ready to go

(IRB.COM) Wednesday 21 July 2010

Mandisa Williams will captain South Africa at the World Cup

With Women's Rugby World Cup 2010 only a month away we catch up with South Africa coach Denver Wannies to talk unbeaten records, squad selection and carrying momentum into the tournament.

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It has been a very busy time since my last column with our two-test series with Scotland, a tour that was very, very important to our Women's Rugby World Cup 2010 preparations as it afforded us the much-needed game time which in turn contributed to the building of a team that can play together.

I was delighted that we enjoyed two more victories on the road in 2010, beating Scotland 27-8 in the first test and then 41-17 a week later after a great late flourish with five tries in the final quarter of the match at Lasswade.

The squad showed me that they are hungry to win and build a winning culture in the first place, but also that they have character from the comeback they put together in the second test to recover from 14-7 down at half time to win and maintain our unbeaten run this year.

We had not experienced a victory away from home before we beat Kazakhstan in Dubai back in April and to have won four matches in a row, all of them on the road, has had a clear impact on my players, they are just so much more confident about the game and the way we want to play as well as about themselves and their abilities.

I have to be honest and admit that when we lined up these four fixtures I didn't expect we would win all four, especially as we were looking at giving new players an opportunity to show their abilities and playing around with a couple of game plans.

A different story

Now the challenge is to maintain the momentum that we've build up until the World Cup kicks off in literally a month's time. There is a big difference between training and playing and that is why we need to make sure that we maintain as much as possible of that momentum.

I've been asked what kind of message our run of results sends to New Zealand, Australia and Wales, our Pool A opponents at the World Cup, and others who may have seen us as the clear weak link of the four.

Well, I've said it before ... the World Cup is going to be a different story to these matches. Everyone is going to the World Cup to win it and as such it was always going to be difficult. The issue here could be that they may have been able to look at how we play and may have time to try and counter us in some areas, but we are very aware of that.

Our results over the last couple of months, though, haven't changed my goal for the World Cup, I would say it has just made additions to them. These are additions mainly driven by the players because they are discovering more and more of themselves every time they play.

I had the players together in camp in Port Elizabeth earlier this month and we worked on some weaknesses we discovered on our tour to Scotland, as well as some new things we want to try out going towards the tournament. Oh and loads of loads of fitness work!

Last week we had to declare our squad of 26 players for the World Cup and it was a hard task to select it, even if we were only working with 30 players at this stage. The players knew they had to work to make the squad and that it would be a question of them not making the targets rather than us not picking them for the World Cup.

We're only human

Some coaches find it hard to tell players they haven't made the cut. It has never been a problem for me because I believe in giving constant feedback to my players, so that final announcement is actually just another feedback session.

However, as a coach you do feel sorry sometimes to be the bearer of such devastating news to a player who has dreamed of playing for her country at the World Cup ... we're only human beings after all!

So, now that I have selected a squad with plenty of players who were part of South Africa's historic World Cup debut in 2006 and also last year's RWC Sevens in Dubai, what can people expect from us ... well good and exciting rugby, the type that South African teams are known for.

I see that New Zealand, our first opponents, have named a very experienced squad with lots of World Cup winning experience in it, while Wales have combined youth with experience.

I was never expecting anything different from them and I also see defending champions who will be determined to retain their status as world champions and I think we all know the Welsh to be a passionate and proud rugby nations ... they will come with all of that to show what they are capable of.