Province won’t abandon youth project despite woes

Even if Saturday is a do-or-die match for their Currie Cup campaign, Western Province will continue to use the competition to develop their younger generation.

It’s been an abysmal season so far for the Cape side, winning only two of their seven matches so far, both of those against the Griffons, and they are one loss away from not making the play-offs this year.

Although they are still in with a shout of making the semifinals, they won’t haul out the big guns against the Sharks this weekend at Cape Town Stadium (kick-off 3pm) to salvage their campaign.

Rito Hlungwani, WP assistant coach, confirmed that they will continue backing youngsters throughout the campaign, and if they make the play-offs, they will see it as a bonus.

“If we make the top four, it will be great, but at this moment our big focus is to build a strong and solid foundation for Stormers Rugby and despite the results at Currie Cup level, we are achieving that,” Hlungwani said.

“If we make the top four, it will be great, but at this moment our big focus is to build a strong and solid foundation for Stormers Rugby ...”

“The big conversation with the players is not about the outcome and winning the Currie Cup, but how can we get better as a union, how the players and coaches can get better. Those are pretty much the conversations we are currently having in our environment.

“We are very happy with the learning process happening. That is one of the most important things. There have been mistakes, but there’s been progress in certain areas and in other areas, we want to improve more. But we will always coach the guys not to be afraid to make mistakes, that is where the most learning happens.”

According to Hlungwani, their mindset will remain the same in the next three games and they will keep encouraging the players to try to have the freedom to play Stormers rugby.

There have been flashes of that during the tournament, but WP’s inability to string two good halves of rugby together has prevented them from claiming wins over the bigger unions.

Hlungwani and the rest of the Province coaches will hope things come together on Saturday against a resurgent Sharks.

“We want to see that learning from our boys in the next three games. We are sort of creating and developing good players who will be able to help us compete in the URC (United Rugby Championship) and Champions Cup. It’s not nice losing every weekend, but there is a sense that we are playing this guy and he is getting better. We are excited about that.”