The Junior Boks are in camp, preparing for the planned U20 Rugby Championship and World Rugby U20 Championship. They had a tough training session against the U21s from Pretoria at Paul Roos Gymnasium’s Markötter Stadium.

Foote emphasized the importance of these training games in building continuity and consistency within the squad, highlighting the value of playing as many games as possible leading up to the two international tournaments.

“The big value of these exercises is to make sure we play as many games as possible leading into the Rugby Championship and Word Rugby U20s,” Foote said.

“We want to get that continuity and consistency and have the guys playing together and understanding how each other performs. That’s the main aim for us, making sure we get good game time.”

Reflecting on the match against the Vodacom Bulls U21 side, which coincidentally included several of last year’s Junior Bok regulars such as Liam Koen (flyhalf), Casper Badenhorst (prop) and Juan Smal (hooker), Foote made special mention of the physical nature of the encounter.

“The Bulls were very physical, relying on the set piece and playing very direct rugby as expected, and in that regard, it ticked a lot of boxes for us in terms of physicality and around the set piece,” he said, acknowledging certain areas that need improvement.

“Things we'll be working on include our discipline, which is a big-ticket item for us. We were poor in that department and weren’t great in the execution around our kicking game, lineouts, and scrums.”

They returned to training on Monday, continuing with the preparation programme. Foote said: “The big emphasis will be the squad’s rugby DNA and giving players more playing time together to ensure they have cohesion, while adding that the effort from the young men was excellent.”

The next training match is scheduled for Friday at 20h00 against Western Province club side Hamilton’s in Cape Town.

Foote emphasized the importance of this match in preparing for late evening games: “I know some of the World Rugby U20 games will be in the evening, and this gives us another opportunity to understand how we prepare for a game that is played late. It helps us understand what our match day routine looks like and what such match day, with a late evening kick-off, feels like.”