Scarra Ntubeni, Rassie Erasmus and Schalk Brits of the Springboks during the South African national men's rugby team photograph and captains press conference at Southern Sun Pretoria on August 16, 2019 in Pretoria, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images)
Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus is a pretty phlegmatic guy, so even though the Springboks made heavy weather of beating Argentina 24-18 at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday evening, his frustrations were tempered by the extra information he gleaned for when he sits down next week and finally chooses his 31-man squad for the World Cup.
That squad will be made public on Monday, August 26, but Erasmus did confirm 12 of the players who will be on their way to Japan.
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Regular captain Siya Kolisi enjoyed a busy hour of action in Pretoria and Erasmus said he would be further fast-tracked once they get to Japan.
Scrumhalves Faf de Klerk, Herschel Jantjies and Cobus Reinach, wing Sbu Nkosi, the scorer of two outstanding tries against Argentina, locks Eben Etzebeth, Franco Mostert, RG Snyman and Lood de Jager, and hookers Malcolm Marx, Bongi Mbonambi and Schalk Brits, who captained his country for the first time on Saturday, will all be in the World Cup squad.
“It was not a great performance today, but it was gutsy, the guys all tried hard. The most difficult thing now is to pick my 31 for the World Cup and I know some guys are going to be heartbroken to miss out. We took a chance tonight and rested 18 players, so you can draw conclusions from that about the make-up of the squad. I would have been gutted to lose tonight and I know the media would have got into me, but we learnt so much.
“The team we put together had a lot of different combinations, a lot of loose ends, which is why it was a stop-start game. Argentina are also a very disruptive team, so with our lack of combinations it was a bit of a perfect storm. But we also gave away too many penalties, which made it a grind, it was frustrating because we made it hard for ourselves,” Erasmus said after the game.
As for Kolisi, Erasmus continued to stress that the loose forward will be the Springbok captain at the World Cup.
“We wanted 30 minutes for Siya, but he said he felt great so we let him continue. But then Marcel Coetzee got injured and Siya really struggled after 50 minutes but he is medically fine. He just needs to get match-fit and we will work hard on his conditioning and give him a lot of game time in our warm-up game against Japan. We are fast-tracking him in a big way because he is our captain, so it’s a special case,” Erasmus said.
The coach said it will probably be a sorry tale for the likes of wing Aphiwe Dyantyi, eighthman Warren Whiteley and utility back Damian Willemse.
“It’s tough in a World Cup year because injured players like Dyantyi, Whiteley and Willemse are in a race against time just due to bad luck. They are all world-class but they haven’t really played a lot this year which is why it’s going to be tough for them just to hop up to the top level,” Erasmus said.
The experience and composure of Brits meant being captain in a potential banana-peel game suited him down to a T.
“There were a lot of new guys brought in, but they added a lot of energy. The coach had warned us that they would have three guys in the breakdown and it wasn’t a pretty game, Argentina slowed our ball down and we gave away a lot of penalties, which kept us in our half. But there was a lot of effort from the players though and it was awesome to have that energy under pressure,” Brits said after his first Test as captain of the Springboks
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