Category: Springboks

Aphelele Fassi has kept the 15 jersey while Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu has also been retained at flyhalf. The Boks have a bit of a lock crisis – so Ruan Nortje will partner PSDT with no recognized lock on the bench. Jasper Wiese will get another chance at number 8. Eben Etzenbeth has been cleared to play and will replace Marco van Staden on the bench

Rassie is resting a number of his first choice players such as Bongi Mbonambi, Frans Malherbe, Siya Kolisi, Damian de Allende, Kurt-Lee Arendse and Willie le Roux. Aphelele Fassi, Lukhanyo Am, Makazole Mapimpi, Morne van den Berg, Ruan Nortje, Salmaan Moerat, Thomas du Toit, Johan Grobbelaar and Jan-Hendrik Wessels will get another chance to impress for the Boks.

Rassie has selected Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu to start at 10 in the first game of the Rugby Championship. He is paired with Cobus Reinach with Grant Williams on the bench.

Kwagga Smith has been moved back into his impact role from the bench with the more physical Elrigh Louw selected to start at 8. Malcolm Marx is back on the bench after recovering from the knee injury picked up being croc-rolled in the game against Ireland.

Salmaan Moerat will captain the Boks against Portugal with only Kurt-Lee Arendse retained from the backline from last Saturday.

Aphelele Fassi, Lukhanyo Am, Andre Esterhuizen, Makazole Mapimpi, Phepsi Buthelezi, Ntuthuko Mchunu and Trevor Nyakane will all feature in the team with Phepsi Buthelezi due to get his first Bok cap at open side. It seems Rassie agree with Plumtree that Phepsi’s future lies at the side of the scrum.

Rassie has kept the same squad as last week for the final test against the Irish.

The Boks usually struggle a bit for teams cohesion in the first tests of the season. However one can already see the influence of Tony Brown on the attack with the Boks much more willing to take the ball wide. PSTD and Kolisi both featured strongly close to the side lines in the build up to KLA’s try.

Rassie has backed a number of the Boks (including Handre Pollard) who won the World Cup last year. He has gone with a 6-2 bench with the versatile Grant Williams and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu covering all the back line positions between them.

Phepsi Buthelezi, Aphelele Fassi, Andre Esterhuizen and Grant Williams have all been retained in the Bok squad with the other regular Shark Boks (Ox, Bongi, Koch, Etzebeth, Am and Mapimpi). New Shark Trevor Nyakane is also in the squad. Nuthuko Mchunu and Ethan Hooker are part of the standby list and will have some training sessions with the squad over the next four weeks.

It will be interesting to see who is appointed as captain with Siya Kolisi also back in the mix.

Two of the new Sharks signings (Hendrikse (debut) and Esterhuizen) will start against Wales in London. Edwill van der Merwe (starting 14), Ben-Jason Dixon and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu will also make their debuts in this game.

Rasnaber has selected a high risk team for the final against the All Blacks. Not only have they gone for a 7-1 bench split but there is only one scrumhalf and one decent place kicker in the squad. If this works out Rassie will go into the rugby annals as an utter genius.

Rasnaber has selected exactly the same team for the first time in the World Cup (and apparently only the second time since 2018). I was expecting players like Malherbe, Etzebeth and Vermeulen to have a break after a real challenging game against France.

England will come out storming and snorting but the Boks should still have too much ammo for the Roses to beat them. The Boks had a two week break before the France game (and many players three) so they should still be relatively fresh. It will be tough to fully get up mentally after that roller coaster last week, but playing most South Africans’ least favourite team will certainly motivate the Boks.