Leicester Tigers-bound Micke Günter raising the bar at set-piece time for the Springboks Women

Springbok Women's hooker Micke Günter believes her upcoming move to the Leicester Tigers will help take her game to the next level. 

The experienced former Bulls Daisies front-row forward recently sealed a deal with the Premiership Women’s team and will remain in the UK after the upcoming Rugby World Cup.

“Yeah, I think it's been a dream of mine for a very long time,” she told the media after Bok training at UCT on Monday.

“The Bulls set such a good standard, the first professional side in South Africa, and they took me on and I gained so much experience from them.

“I just have to give them credit for what they're doing for the women's game at the moment. 

“But now it's my next chapter, going over to Leicester. I'm excited to see what's in store for me.

“The first thing that comes to mind is the standard at Leicester. It's a really good club to integrate in. They're building at the moment, so I think I'll integrate quite well. Yeah, I think it's just to embrace the cultures and just embrace everything that goes with it.”

Before Günter can switch her focus to her new club career though, she has important business to complete with the Boks as they prepare for the WRWC.

The front-ranker only recently returned to the Bok fold after missing the entire last international season through injury, but showed enough in her comeback Tests against Canada that she remains a vital component of Swys de Bruin’s team, particularly at set-piece time.

“I think scrums have always been our strength, but now I think we're building on our line-outs," Günter said.

“It's just shown in our stats from the past two weekends. We've just improved on that. 

“If you look at a couple of years back, immense growth. It's just so exciting. We're setting the bar for now. We just want to continue to climb and improve on that.

“We want to give the backs a good platform to play off of. We can trust our scrums and our line-outs to do that.”

Günter feels that it will certainly be put to the test on Saturday when the Boks face the Black Ferns XV at Athlone Stadium in Cape Town. 

“I think we know they're coming here with something to prove, the XV side. They are a really strong nation,” she said.

“From the grassroots level to where they are, they've played a lot of rugby. 

“We're excited for them to bring the pressure and give us different pictures from Canada. We just need to focus on ourselves mainly and our processes and what we're training this week. The next goal as well is the World Cup.”