The Boks arrived in Australia last week Thursday to acclimatise to the time zone and local conditions, and they wasted no time getting into the thick of things with training and gym sessions on Friday and Saturday.

The players had Sunday off to recover and resumed training on Monday, and according to Snyman, the decision certainly paid off.

“Arriving in Australia the week before the Test was beneficial because it allowed us more time to overcome the jetlag, and especially outside of the Test week itself as well,” said Snyman.

“The guys are now well settled into the time zone, and we are training full-out and feel good, so we are excited about Saturday’s match.”

Snyman said the fact that the Boks had played two Tests against the world’s second highest ranked team, Ireland, last month also assisted in their preparation for the challenge they are about to face against Australia, New Zealand and Argentina in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship.

“I don’t think we could have had better preparation than facing Ireland going into the Castle Lager Rugby Championship, and we certainly learned a few things in those matches which we would like to carry into this competition,” said the big Bok lock.

With the South African franchises having made the switch from participating in the southern hemisphere’s Super Rugby competition to the Vodacom United Rugby Championship, Investec Champions Cup and EPCR Challenge Cup in the northern hemisphere, Snyman admitted that it had changed their approach to the Castle Lager Rugby Championship.

“The preparation is different these days because we don’t face their players during the season as we did in the past, so there’s a lot more work that goes into analysing the players and their style of play,” he said.

Daan Human and Frans Malherbe.

Human, the Boks’ scrum guru, said they are expecting a massive battle up front between the teams, and he complimented Australia for they’ve strides made in the set piece this season.

“Every team have their own strengths, and we certainly see the scrums as one of ours, but Australia always find a way to manage things there,” said Human.

“The progress they are making in the scrums is clear as they have a 100% record in that area in their last three Tests. That said, we’ve also been working on a few things that we want to implement this weekend and we’ll continue to put in the hard yards for the rest of the week.”

Human was not fazed by the new 30 second scrum law and said they have been working hard to ensure that they set their scrums within the stipulated time frame.

“It hasn’t been hard for us to adapt to that – in fact, we managed to do 16 live scrums in 20 minutes last week, so it’s not completely new to us,” said Human.

“We like our scrum sessions to be tougher than that which the players will face in a game, and we’ve been measuring that detail this week, so I believe we are where we want to be in that regard.”

Human brushed off concerns in some quarters around the Springboks’ win record in Brisbane, where they last registered a victory in 2013: “Obviously we are aware of that record but most of the coaches and players only joined the team in the last few years, so for us it’s a matter of trying to prepare as well as we can for the clash and to ensure that we pitch up mentally and physically on Saturday.”

Williams, who will face the Wallabies for the first time in Australia if he is named in Springbok head coach Rassie Erasmus’ 23-man squad for the match, looked forward to the challenge: “They have good scrumhalves and a guy like Nic White, in particular, has a lot of experience, so they will test us. But we also want to go out there and give our best, so hopefully it will be a top-class match.”

Erasmus will name his matchday squad for the clash on Tuesday. The match kicks off at 06h45 (SA time) on Saturday and will be broadcast live on SuperSport.