The Boks' locks in the Rugby Championship Test in Wellington will be Lood de Jager and Ruan Nortjé, with RG Snyman on the bench.
Former Springbok player and now assistant coach Duane Vermeulen said the absence of enforcer Eben Etzebeth for their crunch Rugby Championship match against the All Blacks in Wellington on Saturday was to give him a rest as the team’s management look to extend his rugby career.
Etzebeth, 33, was among a number of surprise omissions for the game, with Jesse Kriel and Damian de Allende also not included in the match 23, with the Boks backing a number of inexperienced players to do the job against their biggest rivals.
Replacing the 136-times capped Etzebeth at No 4 is usual five lock Lood de Jager, with Ruan Nortjé keeping his place in the starting lineup from last weekend’s defeat at Eden Park.
Etzebeth has featured a fair bit for the Boks this season, playing in five of their seven matches so far, with four of those starts, and one appearance coming off the bench against the Wallabies in Cape Town.
Strange decision
But it is strange that he would be rested for arguably one of the Boks’ two biggest games of the year, in New Zealand, while he started against second tier Georgia in Mbombela in July.
Vermeulen, however, explained that the Boks’ coaches had decided this was a good time to rest the experienced lock and that the guys stepping in would be able to cover for him.
“The thing is, you can’t play Eben every single game. The guy is going to burn out, and we still want him to play for a couple of years,” said Vermeulen at a Bok press conference this week.
“We need that little bit of rotation. We have RG (Snyman) on the bench, and those guys (Nortje and De Jager) have played big, important matches. Last year, when we were a couple of locks down, Ruan got the opportunity, and he really did well.
“Obviously, it looks pretty weird if you have two five locks in your pack, but they play their part and they know exactly what they want to do and how they want to go about their game. It’ll be a good challenge to see if the guys can make a step up and work without Eben.”
Breakdown struggles
Looking ahead to the must-win match at the “Cake Tin”, Vermeulen dismissed any worries about the Boks’ struggles at the breakdown, saying that it had been blown out of proportion, despite coach Rassie Erasmus saying that the All Blacks were superb in the department in Auckland.
Vermeulen pointed to the low number of steals, but didn’t reference the struggles of scrumhalf Grant Williams getting clean ball due to the hosts flooding the breakdown, and slowing down the ball which also led to the Bok backline starting on the back foot a number of times.
“They (only) had two poaches and maybe one counter ruck. If you look at a Test rugby match, which goes 80 minutes, I don’t really think it’s a massive talking point,” claimed Vermuelen.
“Obviously, we try to put pressure on our opposition as well. Yes, they’ve done a couple of things, but it’s not exposing us in a way. The focus will always be there, but our overall game is probably the biggest talking point. We can’t go into specifics.”
