Experienced Springbok prop Steven Kitshoff has suffered a neck injury that looks set to rule him out of both the initial parts of the DHL Stormers’ Vodacom United Rugby Championship campaign and probably also the national team’s end of year tour.
Kitshoff, who captained the Stormers to the inaugural URC title in 2022, sustained ligament injuries in his neck during a training camp with the Cape squad in the Wilderness on the Cape Garden Route and although he did not have full details available, coach John Dobson was in a bleak mood on Tuesday afternoon.
“Kitsie has done some ligaments and while I am not completely sure as yet how long he will be out for, it will be for a period of time,” said Dobson in a URC coaches zoom conference on Tuesday.
“At the moment it looks like it will be a six-week reassessment date. As you know, any type of neck injury is always problematic and with ligaments it is difficult to tell too, but as it stands it is six to eight weeks minimum. So, it will only be after that period of six to eight weeks that we will be able to tell you.
“Neck ligaments are always a dangerous cocktail, so we’ve got to be conservative about it,” he added.
If Kitshoff is out for six weeks, which is the best-case scenario, it would take him to about a fortnight before the start of the Springboks’ November tour of Scotland, England and Wales, which might just squeeze him into contention for that trip.
However, he would be lacking match practice, which is what he has been trying to work at in the few Currie Cup games he has played.
BAD WHAMMY FOR STORMERS
If eight weeks or beyond that he will definitely miss the tour, which considering he hasn’t played yet for the Boks in 2024, will mean he has gone the year without playing for the team he has won two Rugby World Cups with.
However, it is the Stormers who will feel they’ve been dealt a particularly bad whammy by having Kitshoff ruled out of the start of their season, as they have been suffering a minor injury crisis for a couple of reasons, one of them the unpopular decision to schedule the Currie Cup for what should be the South African off-season and then the URC pre-season.
But Dobson says he won’t go outside the province or the franchise in search of reinforcements.
“We have Kitsie, Ali Vermaak and Lizo Gqoboko, all of them loosehead props, out now, but the market is done,” said the Stormers coach.
“You can’t replace a Steven Kitshoff, as you don’t get those sort of players hanging on trees, but I think we’ve got enough, with Leon Lyons coming back to us from Griquas and we also have Sti Sithole fit again. We are thin but you don’t replace a Kitshoff at this time of years.
“We also have a promising youngster in Brok Harris who might just have to be pulled into action again,” he chuckled in reference to the veteran who doubles as the Stormers scrum coach.
“But you just have to play with the cards you are dealt with. We just hope that Kitsie is ready in six or eight weeks and not longer than that.”