Venter factor for the Cheetahs

Brendan Venter may be a technical director at the Sharks, but his systems will also make an impact at the Cheetahs.

This is the view of Cheetahs head coach Naka Drotské, who spoke exclusively to rugby365 about his stint abroad during last year's Currie Cup season.

Drotské stepped away from active coaching duty to further his coaching knowledge abroad, with Rory Duncan having taken over as head coach from Drotské for the 2014 Currie Cup campaign.

The Cheetahs mentor said his time in the United Kingdom, with English Premiership clubs London Irish and Saracens, was a "valuable" exercise.

"It was good to see how they operate, what works for them and what doesn't work for them," he told rugby365, as his team stepped up their pre-season preparations ahead of the Super Rugby season - which is less than a month away.

"I had some great sessions there and brought some stuff which we have opted to incorporate into our structures."

Drotské said that coaching evolves all the time and the coaches learn from each other.

"It was worth the effort to go and see, first hand, what teams do in the Northern Hemisphere."

He said there will be no dramatic changes, just some "minor tweaks", as he look to apply his newfound knowledge.

"A lot of the stuff I observed are already in place," Drotské said, adding: "A guy like Brendan Venter, who we all rate very highly as a coach, coached me at London Irish and he put all the systems in place at Saracens.

"So we know basically what they do and it is just minor things we worked on in the off-season - both on attack and defence - that we changed."

The Cheetahs' coaching structure remained unchanged from last year's Super Rugby season.

Drotské is head coach, Os du Randt forwards coach, Hawies Fourie the backs coach and Charl Strydom is on defence.

However, there will be some specialists that will assist the men from Bloemfontein.

"The last few years we brought in John McFarland, the Springbok defence coach, Richie Gray, the Springbok breakdown specialist, Bok backline coach Ricardo Loubscher and Bok forwards coach Johan van Graan.

"We will make use of their services again ahead of the first league match [against the Sharks in Durban on February 14]."

Cheetahs pre-season games:

January 24: v Bulls in Polokwane

January 30: v Stormers in Cape Town

January 31: v with a B Team Griffons in Bloemfontein

By Jan de Koning

@rugby365com