With so much versatility in the Springbok set-up, it is interesting that coach Rassie Erasmus is experimenting with a back playing in the forwards.
Regular centre Andre Esterhuizen, left, featured at flank for the Boks against the Barbarians. Picture: Grant Pitcher/Gallo Images
On Saturday in Cape Town, Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus introduced the world of rugby to the ‘hybrid player’ – a back who can play in the forwards, such as centre Andre Esterhuizen, who played at flank, and a forward who can play in the backs, as flank Kwagga Smith has done before.
Seeing the powerful Esterhuizen pack down at flank against the Barbarians was something new and possibly exciting and somewhat wild, and Erasmus afterwards said it was something he’d been planning for months.
Plenty locks and loose forwards who cover multiple positions
Now it’s one thing picking a ‘hybrid player’ against the Barbarians and quite another doing so against the All Blacks or England or France.
I can’t see the benefit of selecting a player like Esterhuizen to pack down at flank (or possibly lock) when you already have very good versatile forwards to pick from, and who can cover more than one position on the bench — are they not ‘hybrid players’?
In the current set-up, just about every loose forward, bar maybe Smith and Marco van Staden, could pack down at lock and every lock could feature in the back row. Already Pieter-Steph du Toit is a former lock playing at flank, while Ruan Nortje has this season also shifted from lock to flank at the Bulls.
Franco Mostert, too, is comfortable at lock and flank, and so, too, Jean-Luc du Preez.
It would be interesting to know why Erasmus believes it’s better to use a big back as an impact player in the forwards, rather than a strong, big versatile forward.
Backs playing as forwards
Which other regular backline players, however, could Erasmus consider in this ‘hybrid’ role?
Maybe Damian de Allende could play in the back row and at lock, and Jesse Kriel, Canan Moodie and Damian Willemse perhaps? Heck, young Ethan Hooker, at 1.93m tall and weighing 100kg, looks like he could be the best fit of them all, covering centre, wing and possibly flank or lock, as well.
Will we see Erasmus gamble with a “hybrid player” in the bigger Test matches later this year, against New Zealand? I doubt it, but then I also never thought he’d go to the 7-1 bench split of forwards to backs against the big guns, and he did just that.
Maybe Erasmus is onto something by having a big back on the bench who can also slot in among the forwards. We’ll have to wait and see how it works out. Right now though, with so much depth and class in the Bok system, I just don’t see the point of it.
