Jaden Hendrikse still in World Cup picture despite no game time

Springbok scrumhalf Jaden Hendrikse is still very much in the World Cup picture despite him not playing a single minute of international rugby this season ahead of the team’s World Cup squad announcement next Tuesday.

Unless there is a late change due to injury or illness Hendrikse will not be involved in Saturday’s first World Cup warm-up match against Los Pumas in Buenos Aires.

ALSO READ: Tough Argentina Tests exactly what Boks need ahead of World Cup – Davids

Hendrikse was brought along for the quick trip to South America as one of three scrumhalves, with Cobus Reinach named as the starting scrummy and Herschel Jantjies as the replacement in the match 23 for the upcoming game.

The Boks have five scrumhalves in their current squad and at most four of them will be going to the showpiece event.

Faf de Klerk and Cobus Reinach are arguably the definite choices, and before the season started Hendrikse would have been considered a definite pick as well.

Personal loss

However, he came into the season carrying an injury and then suffered a massive personal loss when his father passed away, with the combination of the two seeing him not play in any matches during the Rugby Championship.

In that time Grant Williams has burst into contention with two cameos off the bench, before his first start for the Boks was brutally cut short just 10 seconds into the past weekend’s game at Ellis Park, when he was knocked out straight from the kick-off.

Williams is thus in contention to go to the World Cup as the third choice scrumhalf and with Hendrikse not getting any game time it was thought he might have fallen out of contention.

However, Bok coach Jacques Nienaber emphatically denied this at Tuesday’s team announcement press conference, explaining that they know exactly what they get in Hendrikse and that nothing should be read into his omission.

Nothing wrong

“There is nothing wrong with Jaden, he is fit and ready to go. He probably would have played (during the Rugby Championship) if it wasn’t for the unfortunate family tragedy that happened with his father,” explained Nienaber.

“The plan and how we’d plotted things out in terms of who’s going to play where and when was explained to the squad when we started (the season). We said there might be adjustments for injuries or if there’s a loss of form or stuff like that.

“It’s a little bit easier for us to make a decision on Jaden because we know him, we know what he can do, we see him at training and we know what he did for us last year.

“So we know what we have in Jaden, there’s nothing to read into that (him not being selected). He was just unfortunate, and we wanted to give Cobus another go this weekend and also wanted to give Herschel a go as this game is his first opportunity (this season).”

It is still a possibility then that the Boks take four scrummies to the World Cup, with Williams able to double as a utility player as he can play on the wing, and Jantjies is likely to be the one that unfortunately misses out.