Kolisi to lead strong Springbok squad for Rugby Championship

The Boks will kick off their campaign against the Wallabies in Brisbane on 10 August.

Twenty-two of the 33 players are Rugby World Cup winners. 

At the same time, five 2024 debutants are included in the squad in utility forward Jan-Hendrik Wessels, hooker Johan Grobbelaar, utility back Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, utility forward Ben-Jason Dixon and scrumhalf Morne van den Berg. 

The only newcomer to the group is lock Ruan Nortje, who made his Springbok debut against Wales in 2022 and represented the SA ‘A’ side in November of that year.

“This is a quality group of players, which includes a mixture of youth and experience, and we believe this is the best group of players we could select for this tough assignment in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship,” said Erasmus.

“We rested some players before the match against Portugal to recharge for this competition, and we are excited to see the energy they’ll bring back to the squad. We’ve also included a few younger players who made a strong statement in the Tests we played so far this season.

“The injury to Franco Mostert opened the door for Ruan Nortje to make his comeback to the national team, and he brings a different type of experience as the captain of the Vodacom Bulls.”

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Erasmus lauded the younger players in the group for the strong statement they made this season, and he looked forward to seeing what they had to offer in what will be a vastly different challenge against Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina.

“We were very impressed with the likes of Salmaan Moerat (who became the 66th Springbok captain against Portugal), Dixon, Grobbelaar, Wessels and Feinberg-Mngomezulu when they received a chance to play this season,” said Erasmus.

“While this may be a very different challenge to facing Wales, Ireland and Portugal, we have full faith in the players to make another big step up against the southern hemisphere teams, who play a different type of rugby to the sides we’ve faced up to now.”

The Bok coach expected a challenging Rugby Championship and said: “We faced New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup final and won by a point, and we all know how tough the competition and rivalry is between the teams.

“Australia are also a quality team, and we’ve seen historically that are a force to be reckoned at home, while Argentina are a physical and competitive team and always push us to the limit, so we are under no illusions about what lies ahead.”

The Springboks will face Australia in Brisbane and Perth on 10 and 17 August, respectively, before returning to South Africa to play back-to-back matches against New Zealand on Saturday, 31 August in Johannesburg, and 7 September in Cape Town. 

They will then take a short trip to Argentina to face Los Pumas in Santiago on Saturday, 21 September, before wrapping up the tournament in Nelspruit against Argentina on Saturday, 28 September.