Adnaan Mohamed - Sport24's man on tour with the Boks

Perth - Springbok coach Peter de Villiers has made it clear that no player or member of the management will be allowed to speak to the media unless it is cleared by him.

The Sheraton Hotel where the Springboks are staying is located along the magnificent Swan River just a stone’s throw away from Wallabies’ hotel, The Wyatt. 

The 25-man Bok contingent (the 'A'-team as they are called by the travelling media) arrived at the airport at 13:25 on Wednesday with the 'B'-team (all the reserve players) having already arrived on Tuesday. After the 'A'-team's long flight they promptly took refuge in their hotel rooms and no-one was seen again.

Wednesday’s Bok press conference took place in the boardroom of the Sheraton at 16:00 local time (10:00 SA time).

Besides De Villiers, the only people seen in the Bok hotel on Wednesday afternoon were Anne-Lee Murray (PR and admin manager), Neels Liebel (conditioning coach) and Anthony McKaiser (media manager).

According to De Villiers in previous years the Bok team would already have arrived the week prior. They have however looked at what happened in the past and decided to do things differently this time around.

“We went into the history books a bit and found that in the past we ended up being five weeks away from home in total. It was one of our greatest obstacles because we thought that we were a bit too long away from home. We are trying something new and we hope that it’s going to work. We also took into account that we were coming to Perth and the flights are shorter,” De Villiers explained.

He added that the week was handled it exactly as would normally be the case ahead of a Test.

“All the hard work was done on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was earmarked as a rest day. That’s why we couldn’t come earlier,” he added.

The Boks will have a practice session at 18:00 on Thursday.

*Adnaan Mohamed is on tour with the Springboks and will be writing a daily report from Australia and New Zealand exclusively for Sport24.