Injury concerns for Springboks ahead of Cape Town clash

Rassie Erasmus will be sweating over the injuries to his two frontline wingers following the Springboks’ disappointing 33-16 loss to the All Blacks at Ellis Park on Saturday night.

The result means the visitors take a 1-0 lead in Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series to Cape Town – where they enjoy some fanatical support.

Cheslin Kolbe and Kurt-Lee Arendse both left the field, with Erasmus revealing that Kolbe’s injury probably looked worse than what it actually is. Arendse was not cleared to return after his mouthguard ‘pinged’ following a knock to the head.

“At the moment Cheslin’s our most accurate kicker and didn’t miss a kick, so that’s the reason for that,” Erasmus said when asked about why Kolbe’s was preferred to Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu for taking the placekicks.

“He’s also our only injured player. I think it was more cramp than anything else, and Kurt-Lee. His mouthguard pinged and the match doctor didn’t clear him.”

Usually players are stood down for at least ten days before being eligible for selection again. Erasmus, though, refused to dress up South Africa’s performance as a valuable learning experience.

“I’m not going to butter it up and say we’ll learn from this and get better,” the Springbok coach said.

“We didn’t have to learn from this. We knew what we had to do on the day and we didn’t do it.”

Erasmus went further, insisting that even a different outcome would not have disguised the number of errors made by the world champions.

“So even if we won that scrum penalty and kicked it over and we won, there were still a helluva lot of errors we made,” he said.

“It’s not a wake-up call – there were just so many things we did wrong and New Zealand did right.”

The post Bok flyers injury concerns for Rassie appeared first on SA Rugby magazine.

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