The idea of complacency setting into the South Africa men\u2019s camp in Valladolid this weekend (29-31 May) ahead of the second of the three HSBC SVNS World Championship stops makes Ryan Oosthuizen smile.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Blitzboks may have won the opener in Hong Kong in fine style and already banked the 2025\/26 HSBC SVNS league title, but this squad is driven by something deeper than simple success. They are desperate not to let a nation down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are the guiding light and you don\u2019t want to be the weaklings,\u201d forward Oosthuizen said of the Springboks, his double Rugby World Cup-winning compatriots. \u201cWe want to stand on our own and we want them to also look at us as guiding lights, you know. We want them to be proud of us and to support us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Taking away people\u2019s souls<\/p>\n
This kind of motivation is priceless, Oosthuizen attests when discussing a training regime that has now delivered four HSBC SVNS tournament wins in-a-row and five of the past six.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTraining is much harder than actual games,\u201d the 1.89m forward revealed. \u201cWe definitely train way harder than the games are.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll always notice that at the end of the second half \u2013 that\u2019s when we look the freshest and that\u2019s when we push away from other teams. Once it gets dark, that\u2019s when we get comfortable and we can take away people\u2019s souls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSay Fiji, you stop their off-loading game or New Zealand, you bully them back or Kenya, you match them physically. So, you kind of rip their soul out and then they are basically left with nothing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Playing with total freedom<\/p>\n
Next up in the list of ingredients driving South Africa\u2019s domination is a style of play the squad buys into without hesitation, along with a level of internal competition that leaves even season-long star performers like Oosthuizen looking over their shoulders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got the idea that we want to create a \u2018Blitzbok style\u2019. We want total freedom on the field and we want to dominate defensively,\u201d the 30-year-old said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt comes back to Coach Philip [Snyman, South Africa head coach] he basically calls it playing outside your box, but still inside the bigger system. Like, we are not an offloading team. You’ll never catch us throwing loose offloads because that would be outside the box and outside the system.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look at guys like Selvyn Davids, Shilton Van Wyk and Tristan Leyds and it seems almost like they are playing touch. We give them the ball and they do their thing, and we just adapt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what we want, we want our playmakers to create magic. We set that foundation for them, doing the hard work and the grafting to keep them fresh. And then once they get the ball, they can create magic by just playing with total freedom.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n