Rassie Erasmus has shed more light on the Springboks’ selection philosophy following the naming of the squad to take on Georgia at Mbombela Stadium on Saturday.
The wily Bok boss has named an entirely uncapped front row of Boan Venter (Edinburgh), Marnus van der Merwe (Scarlets) and Neethling Fouche (Stormers) which, despite coming up against the notoriously scrum-centric Eastern Europeans, he believes can get the job done.
“We’ve got some good experience on the bench, we’ve got some proper locks behind them and proper loose forwards behind them,” said Erasmus. “So I guess a bit of a balance throwing the rookies in against a team that we know, like us, enjoy scrumming. If you played in France and you asked a guy like Daan [Human], there’s a lot of Georgians that play there [in the Top 14]. They love scrumming.”
Aside front the front row, Cobus Wiese cracks the nod at No 8 despite never having played there at franchise level for the Bulls, while Siya Kolisi returns at openside, Grant Williams and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu combine at halfback and Damian de Allende and Canan Moodie form the midfield.
Ever the innovator, Erasmus has explained the psychology behind continually shuffling his team selections, with just eight matchday survivors from the 45-0 Gqeberha win over Italy.
Said Rassie: “We’re trying to mix it up. We never drop somebody in our team: we rotate. I don’t know if people want to believe that or not. But like I say, if we get 20 caps into Evan [Roos] over the next cycle before the World Cup, and we get into Cobus Wiese 10, 12 caps [that will be hugely positive].
“We’re trying to see how Canan goes with Damian if Jesse [Kriel] gets injured, will we swap it around? We don’t really see Jesse as No 1, Canan as No 2, Ethan [Hooker] as No 3. There’s still Lukhanyo [Am] coming back.
“We’d like to know that he can move to the wing, Jesse can move to the wing, Handre [Pollard] can move to 12, Sacha can move to 12, Sacha can move to 15, Manie [Libbok] can move to 10. Handre can go to 10, he can go to 15, Kurt-Lee [Arendse] can go to 15, Grant can play scrumhalf, Grant can play wing.
“That’s why we’ve got a group of 46.
“We see it as guys getting used to each other at training sessions and in match situations, and different combos because you never know. We’re trying to win in the present, but also think about the future, and the more we think about different combinations and guys can swap in and out, we think we’ll become a better team.”
