Burger and de Jongh latest injury setbacks for Springboks

SOUTH AFRICA coach Peter de Villiers has been forced to delay naming his team to face Ireland at the weekend until Thursday.

The world champions were dealt a major blow yesterday ahead of their Grand Slam tour of Ireland and Britain after flanker Schalk Burger and centre Juan de Jongh were both ruled out of the five-game trip which starts at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday.

The Springboks do not arrive in Dublin until Thursday morning but de Villiers had been planning to name his team today as his injury-hit squad continued to prepare at altitude near Johannesburg.

Scans yesterday revealed that injuries sustained during Saturday’s Currie Cup final were worse than initially feared for the Western Province duo. Burger, capped 63 times for the Springboks, has a broken rib, while the six-capped De Jongh suffered a hairline fracture to his left ankle in the defeat to the Sharks.

Centre Adrian Jacobs had been added to the squad as a precautionary measure on Sunday and was confirmed as a replacement while Burger’s place goes to the Bulls forward Deon Stegmann, bringing the number of uncapped players to seven, and another Bulls player, full-back Zane Kirchner, has also been added to the 30-man list following the withdrawal of scrum-half Ricky Januarie.

Peter de Villiers, under pressure as coach following a Tri-Nations series that produced just one win in six, put a brave spin on the latest setback.

“It’s a blow to lose players but we’ve rolled with the punch and already moved on,” de Villiers said. “It’s not an ideal situation but we’ve all got on with our jobs and are focused only on the players that we have in camp.”

Flanker Willem Alberts (calf), hooker Chiliboy Ralepelle (flu) and centre Jean De Villiers played no part in either of the two field sessions yesterday, prompting the team announcement to be delayed.

“We’ll give the players some more time in rehab before we confirm the team.

“We have the line-up in mind but want to make sure everyone’s okay before making the announcement.”

The latest withdrawals take to 13 the number of senior players who have been forced out of the tour by injury, including captain John Smit, Bath’s Butch James and Ulster prop BJ Botha.

While the Springboks are trying to forget the summer’s Tri Nations, the International Rugby Board’s Game Analysis Unit last night published a statistical review of the tournament won by New Zealand.

The report reveals that the newly introduced interpretations of rugby’s laws, chiefly concerning the breakdown and offside, had a marked effect on play in the southern hemisphere.

Tries were up by almost 100% on 2009, reaching an average of 5.8 per match across the nine games, while there was a dramatic reduction in the number of kicks out of hand, falling from an average of around 60 kicks per game in 2009 to 37 this year.

The number of unchallenged punt kicks to the opposition also reduced considerably from an average of 23 in 2009 to 11. Other findings saw ball in play time increase by seven per cent from 2009, the number of rucks was up by 40% and the average number of passes per match up by 35%, illustrating the attacking intent of the three teams.