"Setting the tone" ahead of the British & Irish Lions tour of South Africa next year will be one of the primary objectives of John Smit's Springbok squad when they set off on a three-Test tour of the United Kingdom on Friday.

The Bok captain, addressing a media gathering at the team's base in Cape Town, said the trip to the north was an ideal opportunity to "suss out" the opposition.

Smit's team started the serious part of their tour preparations with their first hit-out since the squad was announced last Saturday.

However, the goals have been set and they include creating a winning momentum.

"There are a couple of things we had in the back of our minds going forward into this tour," Smit told a media gathering.

"We haven't won enough games this year so far," he said of an international campaign that yielded just two Tri-Nations wins in six starts — although earlier victories in the mid-year friendlies against Wales (twice), Italy and Argentina pushed that up to six triumphs and 10 starts.

"The up side of that is that we have these three Tests to end off the year, and certainly start the next year.

"If you think about it, there are six Tests until the British & Irish Lions tour is over, and we are getting to play three of the major contributing teams that make up the Lions next year.

"It would be naive of any of us involved to not think that going over now is going to be very important. Yes, the conditions are different, and we will certainly be at home next year.

"We are going there [to the United Kingdom] firstly to win games — that's our job, we're sportsmen, we're rugby players and we represent our country, and we have to win every test that we play — and secondly to create some kind of momentum going into the British Lions before they get here.

"We have to set the tone for what's coming next year.

"We certainly understand the importance and the magnitude of what a British & Irish Lions tour means, and here we do have an opportunity to set the tone, suss out the opposition, because of a lot of them will be coming here with the Lions.

"It is important that we do gain some success over there."

Asked about the testing conditions they are expected to experience — heavy underfoot, as well as wet and cold weather — Smit said it would require a "steely resolve" to succeed.

"You are not used to a lot of things that will happen, in terms of the type of emphasis that you got to put on to your tight five — not work harder, but work a little different.

"The fact that you might get through a Currie Cup playing expansive rugby and doing three double steps in a row, or playing direct and it might work, where as it might not work in an end-of-year tour.

"You also end up preparing yourself in Cape Town and it is wonderful weather, and you get into Cardiff and try to enact your game plan and all of a sudden after 20 minutes it is not working. Then you need to be able to be able to adapt from that as well."

Smit said enough players in the team have experienced conditions in the Northern Hemisphere before and the team is well equipped to cope.

"I think it is possibly where we are most fortunate, as I'm not the only guy who's got that experience. We've all been in that boat before, we've all had to adapt to many different situations. We just have to think about the lessons we learnt in Ireland with the wind, in England with the cold, and certainly in France with the conditions we had there.

"I'm fortunate in the fact that I won't be the only one having to help adapt to what's coming," the Bok captain added.

365

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