Tony Brown: Springboks aiming to \u2018live up to the standards\u2019 against \u2018very unpredictable\u2019 Barbarians<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cA guy like Frans Malherbe is not a front page model but hell, he can play, he does his job in the front-row, he is maybe not the most athletic guy. In Asenathi\u00a0we have somebody who we see has an unbelievable touch and feel for the game, just like Neethling Fouche and Ox Nche \u2013 we not talking about scrummaging necessarily.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when we started looking at Ntlabakanye two years ago, we started tracking his battle rates and it\u2019s up there with the other guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the blessing of the Lions and their coaching team, Erasmus and Human deployed a plan to get Ntlabakanye up to scratch quicker ahead of his first outing in Green and Gold.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe so spoke to Cash [Ivan van Rooyen, Lions coach] and said \u2018We wanted to get this right\u2019 and he went a few times to Daan\u2019s farm and stayed there for a week and Daan worked with him \u2013 with the blessing of coach and CEO \u2013 after the Lions fell out of the URC,\u201d the head coach revealed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever there was a break, he drove to Bloemfontein, went to the farm and he dropped 15 to 18 kilograms. So let\u2019s hope he can now perform at Test match level, that will be great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ntlabakanye is not the only player who will be pulling on a Springboks jersey for the first time with flanker Vincent Tshituka named in the starting XV for the meeting with the Baa-Baas in Cape Town.<\/p>\n
Scarlet hooker Marnus van der Merwe is also set to feature from the bench along with Stormers prop Neethling Fouche.<\/p>\n
READ MORE:\u00a0<\/b>All Blacks and Springboks snubs join Baa-Baas squad to face Rassie Erasmus\u2019 charges<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Head coach Rassie Erasmus has detailed how Lions tighthead prop Asenathi Ntlabakanye shed his excess weight before earning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[67593,41901,84087,225,522,19910,12,7405,4151,2196,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-210507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-asenathi-ntlabakanye","9":"tag-barbarians","10":"tag-daan-human","11":"tag-home-page","12":"tag-international","13":"tag-lions","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-rassie-erasmus","16":"tag-rugby","17":"tag-south-africa","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114738652121062296","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}