Scrumhalf conundrum at the top of Erasmus and Nienaber’s list

National director of rugby Rassie Erasmus and Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber’s top priority ahead of the Rugby World Cup in France seems to be working out who their top scrumhalves will be for the showpiece event.

No less than five scrummies were selected for the second Bok preparation camp taking place in Cape Town currently, and all five of them will probably be in the full training squad that will be gathering in Pretoria in mid-June ahead of the Rugby Championship.

Faf de Klerk, Cobus Reinach, Grant Williams, Herschel Jantjies and the injured Jaden Hendrikse are all in camp and will be battling it out for the likely three berths that will be afforded to scrumhalves in the Bok squad for the World Cup.

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All five will likely get game time in the Rugby Championship, with the word on the street being that the Boks may split their squads, as they did in 2019, sending a team to New Zealand ahead of time to prepare for that game.

This would see two almost completely different match 23’s for the opening game of the Rugby Championship against Australia in Pretoria and the All Blacks match in New Zealand a week later, while the final fixture against Argentina at Ellis Park would see the squads back together.

The Boks might even be swayed to take four scrumhalves to the World Cup, with Erasmus explaining in a press conference last week that they had some very tough choices to make.

Many options

“Form, definitely, and big-match temperament will play a big part,” explained Erasmus.

“Like Jaden did, people sometimes think when we picked Jaden ahead of Faf it was always because he was better than Faf, but a lot of that was about (gaining experience) starting a Test match.

“Herschel was in and out, and he will be the first to agree that his form took a little bit of a dip somewhere, but he upped it and is playing brilliantly now.”

Erasmus continued: “Grant is a guy who played wing before. Is he a good guy to take to the World Cup? Maybe, because he can play nine and wing.

“Then we have Cobus, Sanele (Nohamba) is playing really well. Its tough decisions and we will again, while trying to win, sift a little bit through the Rugby Championships and those three other (World Cup warm-up) games.”

Other tough choices

Although nine seems to be the most pressing position on the Bok managements’ minds at the moment, it isn’t the only position that needs a bit of thought.

The loose forward battle is always a fierce one with just five spots available, while tough decisions are also likely to be made at lock, hooker and flyhalf.