Steven Kitshoff joins fellow World Cup winners on Boks’ injured list

Experienced Stormers and Springbok loosehead prop Steven Kitshoff is the latest Rugby World Cup winner to be sidelined due to an injury.

The two-time Webb Ellis Cup winner from the tournaments in Japan and France has, according to reports, suffered a neck ligament injury that will keep him on the sidelines for several weeks and possibly months. There have also been suggestions the 32-year-old’s career could be in jeopardy.

Kitshoff has not played for the national team in several weeks due to his nursing a knee injury incurred during the World Cup last year and now joins a long list of injured men in Rassie Erasmus’ Boks squad. Kitshoff only recently returned to action for the Stormers.

‘Dangerous cocktail’

Other World Cup stars currently on the sidelines include locks Lood de Jager, Franco Mostert, Jean Kleyn, RG Snyman, centre Andre Esterhuizen, fullback Damian Willemse and scrumhalf Faf de Klerk.

Kitshoff apparently picked up his most recent injury during last weekend’s Currie Cup match against Griquas in Kimberley.

“He’s done some ligaments quite high up in his neck. In six weeks is the reassessment date,” Stormers coach John Dobson told reporters in Cape Town on Tuesday.

“From what I understand, he is out for six weeks at least. Ligaments in the neck are quite a dangerous cocktail. It’s a cocktail that we want to be quite conservative about.”

The veteran prop will thus likely miss the start of the next United Rugby Championship season as well as the Boks’ end of year tour to Europe in November.

In his absence this season, Bok boss Rassie Erasmus has used Ox Nche and Gerhard Steenekamp as his first choice No 1s, while Thomas du Toit and Jan-Hendrik Wessels have also packed down at loosehead prop.

The Boks’ next assignment in the Rugby Championship, which they lead with four wins from as many matches, is against Argentina in Santiago next weekend before the teams meet again the following week in Mbombela.