Speaking about an hour before Farrell’s team was confirmed, South Africa head coach Rassie Erasmus said he feels that, despite perceptions, there is a “toughness” in Prendergast’s game.<\/p>\n
“He’s a big fellow, it looks like he always wants the ball in his hands, and he’s got guts,” said Erasmus.<\/p>\n
“I think people are talking about his tackling, that there’s maybe a weakness there, but I’ve seen him go really hard and he’s a big boy, and he looks pretty fit.<\/p>\n
“I read a bit about his background, I think he’s got a toughness about him.”<\/p>\n
South Africa have not beaten Ireland in Dublin since 2012 but come into Saturday’s game in excellent form, with the 32-17 victory over Six Nations champions France in Paris an especially eye-catching result given Lood de Jager’s first-half red card.<\/p>\n
And Farrell sees Saturday’s contest with the back-to-back World Cup winners as a robust examination for his squad in their final game before the 2026 Six Nations. <\/p>\n
“We’ve been talking a lot about resilience within our game over the 18 months, and there’s been some learnings from that along the way, and that was pretty good last week,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I suppose that’ll get tested to the full this weekend. So I don’t think we’re just learning about individuals. We’re learning about our game and how we’re going to progress with that over the next couple of years.”<\/p>\n
Farrell added that matching the Springboks’ immense physicality will be key for his side on Saturday. <\/p>\n
“It has to be a given, because if you don’t show up with that frame of mind you’re on the backward step straight away,” he added.<\/p>\n
“It is an absolute given in any single Test match, that’s for sure. But certainly it’s highlighted even more so against the best team in the world at this moment in time.<\/p>\n
“What is part of their DNA has continued to be part of their DNA throughout and it’s only getting better – their collision work and their carrying in the contact areas.<\/p>\n
“So if you don’t turn up in that regard, you’re in for a tough afternoon.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking about an hour before Farrell’s team was confirmed, South Africa head coach Rassie Erasmus said he feels…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-150755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}