Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber says he’d loved to have been in a position to use Elton Jantjies’ experience in Saturday’s Castle Lager Rugby Championship finale, but it was’’t an option that could consider out of concerns for the mental health of the player.
Nienaber announced a starting team that featured two changes from the side that beat Argentina 36-20 in Buenos Aires for Saturday’s return clash at Kings Park in Durban, where the Boks could well find themselves having to chase a bonus point win in order to win the trophy.
The selection into the starting team of Frans Steyn at flyhalf was the talking point, with Damian Willemse’s injury meaning that the South Africans are effectively down to their fifth choice flyhalf (given that Johan Goosen couldn’t be considered after coming back from a long-term injury). With the stocks so low in the position, scrumhalf Faf de Klerk will cover flyhalf on Saturday.
Given the importance of the game and the flyhalf emergency currently faced by the Boks, and also taking into consideration that although Jantjies flew home early from Argentina after a media scandal broke out around him the Bok management have said he did nothing wrong, wasn’t there a temptation to bring Jantjies back?
“It would have been nice to be able to do that, Elton does have more than 50 caps, but with all the mental health issues that might come into play we felt that wasn’t a consideration unfortunately,” said Nienaber at a press conference at the team hotel in Umhlanga on Tuesday.
“There are obviously a lot of external pressures on Elton at the moment, so we had to look at the human side. There is a lot of external pressure on him at the moment and it just wouldn’t have been right for us to expect him to play given the massive focus there would have been on him and the scrutiny. For us the person must always come first.”
Steyn will play his first test as a starting flyhalf since playing there against Italy in Cape Town way back in 2008, but Nienaber does not doubt Steyn’s ability to deliver what is expected of him by the team at Kings Park.
“Frans has played for the Cheetahs at flyhalf quite recently and obviously he has also trained there a lot because we see him as one of the covers at flyhalf,” said the Bok coach.
“We have been lucky to have Damian (Willemse) as cover and he stepped in and did a good job for us at flyhalf. We see Frans as a Damian Willemse and the other way around, just Frans has 70 more test caps and has been playing international rugby for over 15 years.”
Nienaber said that as the game was effectively a final, with in his view all four teams in the Championship still in contention for the title, he selected what he considered his best available team, which will account for the return of Pieter-Steph du Toit at blindside flank for Franco Mostert, while Bongi Mbonambi’s return to the bench from injury is also a massive boost for the Boks. And the imperative to win the game and the Championship also accounts for the minimal change in the starting team.
“We didn’t want to make changes across the board as this is a final for us, and it is a final between tour teams and not just two. We needed to select our best team and our best fit available players.”
With the flyhalf position in such sharp focus, Nienaber was asked why he hadn’t given more of the youngsters coming through an opportunity to develop as international players, but he explained that by pointing out the logistical problems that would be faced if he had too many flyhalves in his group.
“There are some good flyhalves coming through, but if we go that route and select them into the squad we would end up using five specialist flyhalves, and that would be too many as we wouldn’t have the time to divide our focus between them,” said Nienaber.
“We will be taking two specialist flyhalves to the Rugby World Cup next year and then we will have a utility back that can cover that position. All teams are made up like that. Even having five specialist flyhalves at an alignment camp is too many in terms of what that would mean for the allotment of time given to each of them by the coaching staff.
“There are good players coming through, as we saw in the United Rugby Championship at the weekend, and those guys are getting a good opportunity developing in that competition (rather than being in the Bok squad and not playing). There is a bunch of exciting flyhalves coming through but we need to be careful how we manage them. When we feel a guy can play we are not nervous about giving young guys an opportunity, as you will have seen in the case of Canan Moodie.”
Springbok team: Willie le Roux, Canan Moodie, Jesse Kriel, Damian de Allende, Makazole Mapimpi, Frans Steyn, Jaden Hendrikse, Jasper Wiese, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Siya Kolisi (captain), Lood de Jager, Eben Etzebeth, Frans Malherbe, Malcolm Marx, Steven Kitshoff.
Replacements: Bongi Mbonambi, Ox Nche, Vincent Koch, Franco Mostert, Duane Vermeulen, Kwagga Smith, Faf de Klerk, Kurt-Lee Arendse.