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Of the many things the local media wanted to see at the Springboks’ team hotel in Pretoria this weekend, the sight of captain Siya Kolisi bounding down a passage – like a five-year-old who has eaten too much sugar – and nearly colliding with his coach Rassie Erasmus was not one.
Thankfully, the Bok skipper saw his coach as he came around the corner and playfully executed an extravagant sidestep on the dodgy knee that has been the subject of so much conjecture regarding how it will affect his chances of leading the team at the Rugby World Cup in Japan next month.
The fact that the state of repair of said knee, and finding a replacement for the departed assistant coach Swys de Bruin, are Erasmus’ only problems ahead of their World Cup opener against the All Blacks is a sign of the incredible work he has done in less than two years in charge.
Judging by the quality of the sidestep in the tight confines of the hotel corridor, it would appear Kolisi’s knee is fine – pending last night’s examination in the Boks’ last test – against Argentina at Loftus Versfeld – at home before leaving for Japan, but the debate has moved elsewhere.
The conspiracy theory doing the rounds is that Kolisi will be stripped of the captaincy just in time for the World Cup, given that no less than three options have been tried in his injury-enforced absence.
The “proof” from a public that seems to distrust Erasmus is his opting for Schalk Brits to be his captain in yesterday’s game when Kolisi was starting.
Read: Captain Kolisi may be down, but he's not out
Erasmus has been reduced to denying this once a week and insisting that the country’s first black captain will lead the Boks in Japan. Given that part of Erasmus’ coaching ticket has been political buy-in by showing more trust in black players, it would be suicidal to have Kolisi in his World Cup squad and not have him as captain.
Replacing De Bruin should prove trickier on a few fronts. Erasmus could opt to promote Mzwandile Stick from doing off-the-ball work and individual skills to the full backline coach, as was the plan, or he could look outside of his management team.
Should that be the case, Erasmus – who almost exclusively likes to work with people he has worked with before for alignment purposes – will be confronted with his Jake White moment. That is, having to find his Eddie Jones as the country’s last World Cup-winning coach did 12 years ago.
If working with an aligned mind is paramount, Erasmus’ options could be someone as surprising as former Bok winger Chester Williams because the two promised each other as players years ago that whoever got a head coach job first would appoint the other as his assistant.
But, as for the rest, Erasmus seems to have his ducks in a row.
Going into yesterday’s match, he was confident that he had 80% of the 31-man squad he would be announcing on August 26 in mind, he had dispatched 16 of those players to the comfortable confines of cotton wool, had won the country its first Rugby Championship title in a decade and could change 20 of the 23 men who played Argentina last weekend and still put out a strong-looking team on paper.
With Kolisi back (and hopefully emerging unscathed against Argentina overnight), the players with the biggest question marks over them are wing Aphiwe Dyantyi and utility back Damian Willemse, who are recovering from a hamstring and knee injury, respectively.
Dyantyi still hasn’t made it on to the pitch since hurting his hammy prior to the Rugby Championship, while Willemse helped create one of Western Province’s tries as a replacement in their Currie Cup defeat against the Griquas on Friday.
Lions skipper Warren Whiteley looks to have all but lost his race against time as there is no clarity on when he will play again, which will open a pathway for flankers Marcell Coetzee and Francois Louw to reinvent themselves as eighthmen as back-up to Duane Vermeulen.
Should Dyantyi and Willemse also fail to show Erasmus enough before the Boks leave to play their final warm-up game before the World Cup – against Japan on September 6 – the coach will have the comfort of retaining remaining wingers Cheslin Kolbe, Sbu Nkosi and Makazole Mapimpi, while Warrick Gelant may yet find himself in contention.
