Will this year be a turning point in terms of playing personnel for the world champions from 2019 and 2023?
With just over two years to go to the next Rugby World Cup, it looks like there could be some big changes in the Springboks’ playing personnel this season.
Coach Rassie Erasmus tested the waters in 2024, using 51 different players, including handing debuts to 12 men, and he’s set to do something similar this year when you consider he has 54 players in a training camp right now, nine of whom are uncapped at Test level.
Playing against teams like the Barbarians, Italy and Georgia in the early part of this season gives Erasmus an opportunity to see who fits into his structures and then later on in the Rugby Championship and November tour of Europe he can further test some players.
Erasmus is then likely to settle on a World Cup squad of maybe 30 to 40 players for the 2026 season which will build into the World Cup year, 2027.
Big decisions
Several big selection calls will thus be made this year, especially with so many of the 2019 and 2023 World Cup winners hitting their mid-30s.
Already Duane Vermeulen has retired, and so, too, Steven Kitshoff, while it is doubtful if Willie le Roux will make it to 2027. There will surely also be question marks about the fitness of men such as Frans Malherbe and Eben Etzebeth, who have had big setbacks in recent times.
Erasmus will have some big decisions to make in the coming months because several young players, and those who’ve been on the fringes of the Test team, are now really pushing hard for recognition at a higher level … and if the Bok boss opts to back them for the next World Cup he’ll want them to play regularly between now and the tournament in Australia, to get as much experience as possible.
Here one thinks of the likes of Wilco Louw, Ruan Nortje, Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Aphelele Fassi, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Edwill van der Merwe, and all the rookies, among them Ethan Hooker, Marnus van der Merwe, Juarno Augustus and Cobus Wiese.
There’s so much talent and depth in Erasmus’ current squad that picking a strong match-23 for now isn’t a problem. The issue is who to back for the 2027 World Cup. This season might give us an indication who those players will be.
