Boks under 'massive pressure’

Matfield said he knew all about the expectations of the South African public, and he had conveyed the message to the players that anything less than a win on Saturday would not be good enough and would ensure that the tour went down as a failure.

“The whole tour is in the balance. If we don’t win we will be under a lot of pressure back home. We all know what the expectations are in South Africa and we have to live up to them. We must win to get our team back on track and end the tour on a positive note,” said Matfield.

“We are fully behind the coaching staff. We are all in this together. If the Boks lose, everyone loses, not just the coaches or the captain or whoever. We are all under pressure.”

Matfield said that the defeat to Scotland in Edinburgh last week had both heightened the pressure and strengthened the resolve of the team.

“We have spoken about this game being a cup final for us after what happened in Edinburgh. This is all or nothing, we will put everything into it and at the end we hope to have come up with the goods on the scoreboard.”

Matfield said that thus far the team had been “alright” in terms of results in that many people had written the side off because of injuries. However he had always felt the team had the players to do well and the side had done well against Ireland and Wales before letting themselves down against Scotland.

“We aim to win every game we play but sometimes that doesn’t happen, as we saw last weekend. There is nothing we can do about that now and the only thing we have in our hands is that we can win on Saturday. That would mean happy faces in our squad and also back at home,” he said.

“There is a very keen desire to put things right. We have prepared very well and Thursday and Friday was about me trying to calm things down so that energy levels are up for the game. The big message to the guys is that if you hope to win at Twickenham against an England team on the rise, then you have to go out and make things happen.”