Nienaber: 'It is not nice to chop and change teams'

“Remember, our contracts are based on 40% win bonuses. So it's tough to tell an assistant coach we need to build squad depth but we might lose this Test match, which is 40 percent of your salary.” 

ROTATION IS KEY: Rotation has been fundamental to everything Jacques Nienaber and Rassie Erasmus have tried to do. Pic: ©INPHO/SteveHaagSports/Steve Haag

Nobody can say Jacques Nienaber hasn’t put his money where his mouth is. The Springbok head coach was sitting down with a bunch of South African writers prior to the squad’s visit to the UK for World Cup warm-up matches against Wales and New Zealand when he explained just how true that is.

Nienaber and Rassie Erasmus, the Director of Rugby who has moved upstairs but continues to stay busy around the house, have been promoting the need to develop a bigger and better squad since the Lions tour in 2021. Rotation has been fundamental to everything they have tried to do.

Much like Andy Farrell and his embrace of extra audition opportunities against the Maori, New Zealand ‘A’ and with the Emerging Ireland tour, the Boks brought 50 players on their tour of Europe last November as South Africa ‘A’ faced Munster and Bristol. The mixing and matching continued in the summer’s Rugby Championships.

Not everyone was happy with it but they stuck to their process and to their beliefs.

“It is not nice to chop and change teams,” Nienaber told that group of scribblers in mid-August. “Remember, our contracts are based on 40% win bonuses. So it's tough to tell an assistant coach we need to build squad depth but we might lose this Test match, which is 40%of your salary.” 

Nienaber saw how a rigidity of thought and deed put paid to the Springboks’ last World Cup defence in 2011 when they had the bones of the 2007 squad back on board but found that the number of them unable to train on any given day was tipping double digits. Australia showed them the door in a quarter-final in Wellington.

This singularity of mind and approach was crystal clear when Erasmus and Neinaber named a World Cup squad for France that contained four scrum-halves, one ten, a single recognised out-centre and two players listed officially as utility forwards in Deon Fourie and Franco Mostert. Some dismissed it as little short of a hoax.

Multi-functional rugby players are less of a rarity than in the past but this extreme approach peaks today when the Boks use those four scrum-halves in the one matchday squad with Cobus Reinach at nine, Jaden Hendrikse covering off the bench, Grant Williams starting on the wing and Faf de Klerk the reserve out-half.

And not just in that. Deon Fourie is the back-up hooker five years after he last played in the front row with Lyon. More recently a hooker, he has never actually played there at Test level while Canan Moodie and Damian Willemse display their own brands of versatility by lining out in positions that have not been their norm in recent times.

Vincent Koch getting a first start in 29 Tests, since the 2019 tournament, is almost an afterthought. The Boks have made 14 changes from their opener with the likes of Manie Libbok, Cheslin Kolbe, Pieter-Steph du Toit and Siya Kolisi among those given weekend passes.

Romania, who named 12 of the side that shipped 82 points to Ireland last Saturday, won’t be the stress test this thinking requires but the loss this week of Malcolm Marx for the tournament, coupled with the strong doubts over Eben Etzebeth’s availability for the Ireland game, make the next week a test of the acid variety.

The Boks arrived in France without major talents in the form of Handré Pollard, Lukhanyo Am and Lood de Jager. Pollard may well be called in now that Marx’s exit leaves a bed to be filled but this chipping away of such important players can’t help but dilute the potential strength of the Bomb Squad and the collective as a whole.

“We are watching all our ‘ready-to-go’ players who were injured,” said Nienaber, adding that they will until Sunday before deciding who gets that call so as not to distract from the business at hand. “So we’ve been keeping an eye on Handré and Lukhanyo. Lood is a little further off in his recovery.” 

For now, much of the responsibility for leading the Boks will fall on Bongi Mbonambi who captains the side today in the absence of Kolisi and so many others, and not least given he had been sharing the hooker duties so effectively with Marx.

It may be that South Africa revert to the norm and just call for Joseph Dweba, an actual hooker with recent Test experience, to replace Marx but for now it will be Fourie who is backing up Mbonambi in that front row, the 36-year old who expressed the hope that switching from flanker back to the front row would be like riding a bike again.

“We’ve been in the squad and the system together for a while now and, apart from that, Deon has been playing longer than I have,” said Mbonambi. “So while I’ll help him wherever he needs help, Malcolm and I have also learned from him. He played hooker for the DHL Stormers for a few seasons so he is fully capable of fulfilling that role.”