Springboks 'not holding anything back ' from the British and Irish Lions in Georgia tests

Springboks head coach Jacques Nienaber and captain Siya Kolisi claim that the Springboks are not concealing any secrets from the British and Irish Lions during their tests against Georgia.

"We were not holding anything back," said the captain following the Springboks commanding 40-9 win over Georgia at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria on Friday. 

The head coach echoed the statements of his captain saying: "We said we would pick the best available side for both games (against Georgia)"

The Bok coach complimented Georgia, who held a 9-5 lead after 30 minutes, before the Springboks finally found some cohesion and scored 35 unanswered points.

“I have to compliment Georgia – we knew of and expected their physicality, yet we had no real marker to know how well we would respond to that,” said Nienaber.

“They shocked us a bit in that opening half, but we now have a marker after this. We now know what to expect next week, which is something we did not have coming into this Test match.

“The way we first responded was poor, our discipline was not good and credit to Georgia for putting us under that type of pressure.”

Asked whether the Springboks were concealing anything in their tactics with the Lions in mind, Kolisi said: "We did not start off the way we wanted to, we could not get our scrumming and our mauling the way we wanted it to be. We were not holding anything back."

Kolisi said he was pleased with South Africa's improvement in the second half when they scored 21 unanswered points after leading 19-9 at half-time.

"We have never tried to hide away from the fact that our set pieces are important to us and we know they are important to them (the Lions) and to the Georgians, too.

"We were not thinking so much about the Lions - we were focusing on the Georgians."