Ken Borland

Despite a highly-encouraging first-half display by the SA A team before they understandably depleted their energy reserves, Springbok director of rugby Rassie Erasmus said he remains concerned about how he is going to manage his squad ahead of the first Test against the British and Irish Lions on July 24.

The SA A team raced into a 17-3 lead in the first half against the Lions at Cape Town Stadium on Wednesday night, but the second half saw them desperately clinging on in defence, eventually securing a 17-13 win. Getting the match fitness up and dealing with the numerous Covid cases within the squad will continue to require a delicate juggling act by Erasmus and head coach Jacques Nienaber, who is now out of quarantine and will retake the onfield reins.

“The guys put their hands up and showed their guts, and we do have a lot of players to come back into the mix. But there are guys I’m worried about – Malherbe, Mbonambi, De Jager, Snyman, Kolisi, Vermeulen, Pollard, Mapimpi and Frans Steyn – it’s about how we reintegrate those Covid cases because they are coming back in dribs and drabs as they get released from quarantine.

“So I’m 70-80% happy with the squad, but the other 20-30% are going to need really good management. We have two options to play on Saturday: the Bulls have gone into quarantine for us as back-up, but if there are cases in the Stormers camp then it would be safest for us to play the Lions again. If we don’t play them again, it definitely won’t be because they are afraid, it will because of their plans for the tour. It won’t be because we’re more physical than them,” Erasmus chirped.

As heartening as the SA A team’s display was, since it was basically a shadow Test team if all the players Erasmus mentioned don’t make it back for the first Test, the World Cup winning coach knows that courage and determination will only win the silverware if they are reflected on the scoreboard.

“We don’t want to run away with our emotions. We knew we would run out of steam and that made the match tighter in the end, but we played with a lot of heart. I’m proud of that, but we won’t win the series on that alone. There are a lot of technical and tactical things we need to get right,” Erasmus said.

Lukhanyo Am will captain a shadow Springbok side dressed up as SA A against the British and Irish Lions in Cape Town on Wednesday and the captaincy could also be on loan to him for the first Test on July 24 after director of rugby Rassie Erasmus admitted that those players who are currently Covid-positive and isolating will be in a race against time to make that match.

Regular captain Siya Kolisi is one of the players currently in quarantine.

The numerous Covid infections in the Springbok camp led to the second Test against Georgia being cancelled, and Erasmus admitted that that has forced them to pick many of the players they have pencilled in for the first Test for Wednesday night’s game.

“It depends on how the players progress through the Return-to-Play protocol and some of them will definitely be available from Wednesday and Thursday next week. Guys like Frans Steyn and Handre Pollard might make it because they tested positive really early. And some guys can just slot into the team, while others need more time to get their engines running. For them it will be touch and go.

“Losing the second Georgia Test has been massive and it would have been much easier if we had had that game and the SA A one. But we have a lot of knowledge about some of the players, we know their class and how they react under pressure, so for us, it’s not so much about gelling as about match fitness because it’s a bit of a worry for some guys how long it’s been since they last played,” Erasmus said on Monday.

Erasmus is also clearly trying to convince the British and Irish Lions to agree to Saturday’s tour match also being between them and an SA A side, instead of the Stormers. But like an over-enthusiastic puppy getting a paw to the nose, Lions coach Warren Gatland made it clear in his concurrent press conference that he was not in favour of that.

So Erasmus could well be left hoping his team has enough conditioning in the kitty from their three-week camp in Bloemfontein and the single Test against Georgia to match the Lions’ impressive build-up to the Test series.

“We had three weeks of good intensity training in Bloemfontein and the plan then was two Tests against Georgia and the SA A game to be ready and we could not have asked for more than that. So now we have lost one week of training and one match. But after seven days in their hotel rooms, the guys shouldn’t totally go to pieces and get out of shape.

“But I’m sure Warren Gatland wold like to play against the best possible Springbok team and the safest thing medically would be for SA A to play again against the Lions on Saturday. We have been in a totally hard bubble and we are all negative. I’m sure they would not be afraid to play us again and that would be the best preparation for us to provide good competition in the Tests against the Lions,” Erasmus said.

With so much uncertainty around at the moment, it is a good thing that Am has temporarily taken over the captaincy because he is a leader who provides a haven of calm.

SA A team – Willie le Roux, Cheslin Kolbe, Lukhanyo Am, Damian de Allende, Sbu Nkosi, Morne Steyn, Faf de Klerk, Jasper Wiese, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Marco van Staden, Franco Mostert, Eben Etzebeth, Trevor Nyakane, Joseph Dweba, Steven Kitshoff. Bench: Coenie Oosthuizen, Malcolm Marx, Vincent Koch, Nicolaas Janse van Rensburg, Rynhardt Elstadt, Herschel Jantjies, Jesse Kriel, Damian Willemse.

The Springbok camp was rocked by three positive Covid tests on Sunday, but director of rugby Rassie Erasmus said the notion that this would put the two Tests against Georgia and the entire British and Irish Lions tour in doubt was incorrect.

Erasmus revealed that Durban-based wing Sbu Nkosi, tighthead prop Vincent Koch of Saracens and scrumhalf Herschel Jantjies, who has already had Covid, were the three players who tested positive when the squad gathered at their Johannesburg hotel. All three players are asymptomatic but training on Sunday was cancelled as a precautionary measure.

“We’ve been in camp for three weeks without any problems, but this was the first time everyone really assembled, the first time we’ve had all squad members with guys coming in from all over. The three guys who tested positive have to be confined as we fall in now with British and Irish Lions tour protocols. We have advised the tour medical committee and now we wait for the next step.

“But it’s not a big worry for us, I’m fairly confident these are isolated cases, those players have just been unlucky. We’ve followed very strict protocols at our hotel, we weren’t allowed to be in one room before testing and the guys could not go to their own rooms for five to seven hours until they got the results – just to make sure that contacts are minimal.

“I don’t think the Georgia game on Friday is in any doubt, we have a squad of 45 especially for this reason. We will never not have enough players, we can draft players in because they are on testing regimes with their provinces. I’m fairly sure very few guys are infected, this came from something external and the guys have not done anything wrong,” Erasmus said on Sunday.

While the positive tests have spiked the Springboks’ plans on Sunday, most of the groundwork for the first Test against Georgia will already have been laid down. Coach Jacques Nienaber said the Springboks had to be adaptable in these harrowing times.

“It’s not ideal, we would have loved a normal week flow, but it’s important in these times of Covid and changing environments, that we are adaptable, that is key,” Nienaber said.

Both Nkosi and Jantjies were likely to feature in the squad for the Georgia Test at Loftus Versfeld, but the heavy frame of powerhouse Koch was only likely to be seen later because he has been in England and has not been working with the Springboks over the last three weeks.

The maudlin cries complaining that all our best talent goes overseas is something we are quite used to hearing in cricket and rugby and the issue has come to the fore again with Devon Conway’s spectacular debut for New Zealand’s impressive Black Caps cricket team and Springbok director of rugby Rassie Erasmus announcing a squad of which nearly 50% were based overseas.

Top sportspeople taking their skills elsewhere is one of the biggest challenges facing our administrators, but it is also a problem that the country faces as a whole in a wide range of fields. On the sporting side, there is not much cash-strapped Cricket South Africa nor SA Rugby can do about the major socio-economic issues that are driving emigration.

Erasmus has bemoaned the financial realities that mean it is just about impossible for SA Rugby to stop their leading players from taking lucrative contracts overseas; the Rand simply cannot compete. And appealing to professional sportspeople to consider the good of the game back home is a bit like pleading with a kid to eat their broccoli because it’s good for them.

But by choosing a Springbok squad to play the British and Irish Lions in which 22 of the 46 members are based overseas, Erasmus is in a way encouraging what he was complaining about. Local players see that squad packed with emigrants and must be thinking that heading off to Europe or Japan will be a fruitful endeavour.

And not just in terms of their wallets. This latest Springbok squad selection has almost sent a message that you are more likely to be picked if you are based overseas.

There are so many talents blossoming in South African domestic rugby at the moment – the likes of Ruan Nortje, Lizo Gqoboka, JD Schickerling and even the reinvented Cornal Hendricks – but it seems every time there was a 50/50 call, the selection went the way of the guy based overseas.

Erasmus has expressed his disappointment that there are so many of our players offshore, but favouring the exiles when it comes to selection is not going to help restrict the numbers departing.

The tacit statement behind the selection is that the standard of overseas rugby – even in Japan – is better than that of the South African domestic game, which is not a great admission for the director of rugby to make.

A 50% overseas Springbok team is also harder for the general South African public, the vast majority of whom do not have satellite TV, to relate to and support. How many rugby fans have actually seen Coenie Oosthuizen play lately? But most rugby fans will know that Gqoboka has been in rampaging form for the Bulls.

Ever since Apartheid was introduced to rip apart the fabric of our society, we have lost cricketers to overseas teams. The original outflux was to England, but lately there has been a surge of South African products playing for New Zealand.

Amazing as it might be for a country of five million people and more than 26 million sheep, New Zealand is not just the best producer of woollen products in the world, but they stand on the verge of being the best Test cricket team on the planet as well. That after falling just one run (or one boundary or one correct umpiring decision) short of winning the ODI World Cup.

So New Zealand certainly have a strong national cricket team at the moment. Which is ironic because there have been a pile of South African imports who couldn’t crack it here but have made it big on that island.

Left-arm quick Neil Wagner is the current enforcer of the bowling attack, BJ Watling is arguably the best Test wicketkeeper/batsman in the world (joining Kruger van Wyk and Glen Phillips as Saffers who have donned the gloves for the Black Caps), Colin Munro is a flashy white-ball player and no-one should need reminding of what Grant Elliott did to the Proteas in the 2015 World Cup semi-final.

Conway has now joined that list and his is an interesting tale. Having been a schoolboy prodigy, the Johannesburger went through hell just trying to establish himself as a franchise cricketer. In 21 four-day franchise games he could only average 21 and his white-ball averages are almost identical.

And then in 2017 he decided to make a fresh start halfway across the world and pow! Conway is now one of the most exciting newcomers to international cricket and his 200 against England on Test debut at Lord’s must be one of the finest performances in a first Test ever.

But blaming CSA for letting this late-blooming talent slip through their fingers is one of my pet hates. Sure, transformation priorities do lead to certain people being favoured when it comes to selection, but Conway was given every opportunity here but for some reason just could not perform well enough to become a household name.

He deserves nothing but praise though for how he has rejuvenated his career.