The Boks have named a match 23 featuring just 514 caps, with 445 in the starting lineup and only 69 on the bench.
Springbok fringe players Vincent Tshituka and Quan Horn are on the bench against Scotland at Loftus on Saturday. Picture: Richard Huggard/Gallo Images
A number of fringe players will likely see this as a golden opportunity for them to impress the Springbok coaching team after being named in the match 23 to face Scotland in the second round of the Nations Championship at Loftus on Saturday.
Bok coach Rassie Erasmus has put his faith in a much-changed team to do business against the in-form Scots, who backed up their impressive Six Nations campaign earlier this year with an away win over Los Pumas in Argentina last weekend.
Last week Erasmus named an incredibly experienced starting XV to face England, featuring a mammoth 935 caps, although that fell to 692 caps after the late withdrawals of two Bok centurions due to injury, captain Siya Kolisi and the most capped Bok of all time Eben Etzebeth.
However, this week’s starting XV doesn’t even come close to the 692 caps that took the field this past weekend, with Saturday’s starting lineup set to feature 445 caps.
The bench is the same story. Although last weekend’s Bok bench wasn’t very experienced either, with 164 caps on it, this Saturday’s sees a whole lot less with just 69 caps to call on.
The exciting thing for many of these fringe players is that this is a match against a serious tier one nation, so if they can prove themselves against some of the world’s best, it will go a long way towards them keeping themselves in the Bok mix heading towards the 2027 World Cup in Australia.
Aiming to impress
Players who will be aiming to impress in the starting side include wing Edwill van der Merwe, scrumhalf Embrose Papier, eighthman Evan Roos, utility forward Cobus Wiese and hooker Johan Grobbelaar.
On the bench, prop Ntuthuko Mchunu, utility forward Vincent Tshituka and utility back Quan Horn will hope to get a good chance to stand out.
Scrumhalf Papier will be particularly eager to impress after being overlooked for the Boks over the past few years despite some top performances, and he links up with his franchise teammate and very experienced Bok Handré Pollard as the halfbacks, while a few other Bulls combinations are also in the team.
“Handré can play off most scrumhalves, Embrose can play with most 10s, but yes, it is beneficial to have a partnership that went through to the (United Rugby Championship) final,” explained Erasmus about his selections.
“With the pack, we did not necessarily look at Bulls combinations. It was actually seeing who was fit, first of all, and then who we would like to see perform well. Our average caps in the pack is about 25, which is not a lot. In the team there are 11 guys who have less than 10 caps.”
Erasmus said the team would need to hit the ground running against Scotland, if they didn’t want to find themselves in early trouble and chasing the match early on.
“I think these guys this weekend might have to find their feet really quickly in the game,” Erasmus said.
“We want to have another fast start, maybe not on the scoreboard, but hopefully they can have a high intensity start and we will be happy with that.”
