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MARSEILLE - South Africa had been expecting to play Wales in the last eight and had done all their homework in preparation but an upset meant they have had to quickly swot up on Fiji before Sunday's World Cup quarter-final (1300 GMT).
Fiji's unexpected victory over the Welsh
last weekend thrust them into the knockout stage and while the Springboks are overwhelming favourites to win in Marseille, South Africa coach Jake White remained wary of his unpredictable opponents.
"Let me put it this way, we did all our analysis on Wales," White said.
"We don't really play Fiji much so it is difficult."
The Springboks got a taste of what they can expect against Fiji when they played Samoa and Tonga during the pool games.
They weathered a brutal early onslaught to thrash Samoa 59-7 but almost came unstuck against Tonga before holding on for a 30-25 victory.
"Tonga have the forwards, Samoa the tacklers and Fiji the running game," White said.
"I think they're probably more athletic in their backs."
South Africa also thrashed England 36-0 and the United States 64-15 to finish at the top of the Pool A standings and have made no secret of their strategy to add Fiji to their list of scalps.
Although they have lost prop BJ Botha and his back-up CJ van der Linde remains in doubt, the Springboks still possess one of the most feared packs in the tournament and plan to attack Fiji in the forwards.
Fiji's strength lies in their backs and ability to score tries from turnovers, but the South Pacific islanders know they will have to gain some parity in the set-pieces to have any chance of upsetting the Springboks.
"If we can win our fair share of ball and create one-on-one opportunities we're in the ball game," Fiji coach Ilie Tabua told Reuters.
"We know we can mix it with the best and win games. That win over Wales gave the team a lot of confidence and more importantly gave individual players self-belief."
Fiji's chances of upsetting South Africa were dealt a serious blow with the loss of influential first five-eighths Nicky Little but skipper Mosese Rauluni believes the islanders are not without hope.
"We aimed for the top eight and when we got there we sort of realised this is a do-able job. Tonga took South Africa right to the wire so we thought why can't we," he said.
"We're not thinking about leaving next week, we want to stay. It's going to be an even bigger task than Wales and we can't let South Africa into the game like we did with Wales because they'll really put their foot on our throat and choke us.
"The one area that we're really going to have to work on is our scrum, if we can't get clean ball we're going to struggle and the ball we do get we have to use well."
- REUTERS
