The call up to Handre Pollard was largely expected as he desperately needs game time but the most significant part to the Springbok selection for their final Rugby World Cup Pool B game against Tonga on Sunday is the make up of the replacements bench.
Of course there is a lot of focus on the inclusion of Marco van Staden, who is normally a flanker, as the back-up hooker to Deon Fourie. The Stormers veteran starts in the No 2 jersey for the first time as a replacement for the rested Bongi Mbonambi.
We will get to see more in Sunday’s game when it comes to Fourie’s potential to be an adequate fill in should Mbonambi be injured during the play-off phase than we did in the cameo appearance he made late in the game against Ireland last weekend. But how Van Staden will go in what for him is an unfamiliar position will be particularly important given what the Boks lost when Malcolm Marx was injured and ruled out of the tournament.
SURPRISING DUANE DIDN’T START AGAINST IRELAND
Duane Vermeulen is back in the starting team this week and in retrospect it was surprising he did not start against Ireland given that behind Marx he is probably the most influential Bok player at the breakdown. Fourie of course is also good at the breakdown but he is not the same as Marx or for that matter Vermeulen when it comes to ball carrying.
Van Staden, should he be able to adapt, could be a more like for like replacement for Marx, though it is does need to be added that expecting a player to adapt so quickly to a specialist position like hooker at a crucial stage of a Rugby World Cup is a bit like expecting someone with no air miles behind them to take off into an electrical storm the first time they get to pilot a plane.
You won’t catch me as a passenger if that was the case and likewise Bok supporters shouldn’t be enthused about having a flanker perform stop-gap in such an important position.
Yet it shouldn’t really be the Van Staden selection that should be the most talked about as it was telegraphed in the immediate aftermath of Marx’s departure from France. When the coaches elected to stick with what they had when it came to forwards and go for a flyhalf in Pollard as Marx’s replacement it pretty much told us that Van Staden will be tried in the front row.
MANIE ON THE BENCH SHOULD BE THE TALKING POINT
Nope, the reversion to a five/three split between forwards and backs on the bench, with Manie Libbok still in the match day squad as the back-up flyhalf may prove almost more noteworthy as it adds fuel to the speculation that Pollard’s role in the big game that is to come, meaning the probable quarterfinal against France on 15 October, may be as a second half midfield replacement.
South Africa’s national director of rugby Rassie Erasmus is right when he says Pollard is not Superman and many of those who assume he will be an automatic choice at No 10 because of his goalkicking appear to have a bit of fantasy attached to their perception - when it comes to kicking from the tee, Pollard is a touch more reliable than Libbok but he has never been a Naas Botha or Jonny Wilkinson.
Indeed, lest it be forgotten, it was because he is not even a Morne Steyn that the veteran winner of the previous series against the British and Irish Lions back in 2009 got to do it again in the more recent Lions series in 2021. Steyn came on to do precisely what he did do in the deciding test of that series - kick the winning goal. When Pollard was the starting flyhalf.
POLLARD COULD GET TO REPRISE STEYN ROLE
Pollard could get to reprise that role in a quarterfinal and beyond that as an inside centre, where he was training before the Boks left South Africa for France last month. All the criticism of Libbok’s place-kicking has obscured how good he has been at pivot in what is effectively his first full international season and his ability to kick with both feet and pass equally well in both directions plus his eye for an opportunity has brought a dynamism to the Bok attack that was previously lacking.
Will the Bok coaches want to eschew what Libbok brings in all-round play so that Pollard’s place-kicking gets accommodated? Either way it’s a massive risk, and the Boks might be better off doing what they did in the warmup game against the All Blacks but didn’t do against Ireland by kicking the long penalties into the corners and backing their maul in the quarterfinal.
Starting with Libbok but having Pollard on the field in the last quarter is an option for the Boks and the inclusion of Libbok on the bench, and reversion to a 5/3 split, will facilitate an opportunity to test it against Tonga.
The Boks do rely heavily on a strongly built inside centre taking the ball up, so Pollard starting at 12 isn’t really an option (you’d back Damian Willemse to go to that position as the third option behind Damian de Allende and Andre Esterhuizen ahead of Pollard), but it is an option for the latter part of a tightly fought play-off game.
The memories of Pollard’s clutch kick to win the 2019 semifinal against Wales justifies the need to have him on the field if such an opportunity arrives again, but he hasn’t played international rugby since last August and hasn’t played much rugby in recent months. The latter part of Sunday’s game could well see him move from pivot to inside centre as a prelude to that being the way the Boks will play it against France in mid-October.