Australia hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for the Springboks in recent years but the world champions should at least be boosted by the return to the selection mix of a few star players who were expected to miss the forthcoming trip.
The Boks open their Castle Lager Rugby Championship campaign against the Wallabies in Brisbane on 10 August before concluding their two match trip Down Under in Perth a week later. Initially it appeared Pieter-Steph du Toit would miss the tour due to an undisclosed injury that looked set to rule him out for six weeks, but coach Rassie Erasmus disclosed after the 64-21 win over Portugal at the weekend that Du Toit has been cleared to play.
And in a further boost for the Boks, Du Toit has been joined by another double World Cup winner Steven Kitshoff on the list of players in the selection mix for the first game, while Malcolm Marx looks likely to be available for the Perth game as he is making good progress from the injury sustained in an illegal clean out from Ireland captain Caelan Doris in Durban.
Reading between the lines, all three players should be in the Bok squad for the Australian tour that will be named on Tuesday.
“There is a squad of 42 currently with players coming in and out of the squad,” said Erasmus.
“Jasper (Wiese) must still come back, Damian Willemse must still come back, Pieter-Steph has been cleared and Steven Kitshoff is cleared. And it looks like Malcolm Marx can play the second Australian game.”
While Erasmus will be pleased to have as strong a group as possible to choose from, he agreed that the performance against Portugal had made his job easier in the sense of confirming how much depth has been grown. It certainly appears that the Boks are in a better space in terms of the growth of experience of a wider group of players than the last time they were in Bloemfontein, which was when they lost to Wales in the middle test of the 2022 series.
Then, like now, the Boks made 14 changes from their previous game. Of course Portugal aren’t quite in the same league as opponents as the Welsh, but the curve ball presented by the early sending off of centre Andre Esterhuizen did present a character and composure test to a squad that featured seven new caps on the day.
“The big thing about games like this is that you get to learn the players’ characters. The red card did mean we had to adjust. We had Duane (Vermeulen) on the side of the field, we had Jerry (defence coach Jerry Flannery) on the side of the field, and he had to make plans around not having a blindside wing.
“We had seven new guys on the field who would all have been understandably nervous playing their first test match. They could easily have been rattled (but weren’t) so it was a big learning and I was very pleased with how it went. You can’t compare a game against Portugal with what the guys faced the previous week when they played Ireland, but I am satisfied. We played well.
“The most important thing is that we have a bigger group of players now after this game. There are more players who can play for the Boks and they are knocking on the door. We must find a way to open that door for them.”
Erasmus said after the second test against Ireland in Durban that the players not playing in Bloemfontein would be off for 10 days after helping the preparations for the Portugal game until Wednesday of last week, so it can be assumed that all the Boks will be off this week and will regroup to start preparations for the Australian leg of the Championship next week.
Not everything went perfectly and apart from the red card and two yellows, that Erasmus said indicated that there was a discipline problem that needed to be sorted out as “we won’t win the World Cup like that”, the Boks would have gone beyond the 70 mark had Manie Libbok had his place-kicking boot laced on. Instead he had another of those spray gun days when it came to kicking conversions, with ironically some of his most difficult touchline attempts being the successful ones.