Last night the Springbok squad to carry the nation’s hopes across to New Zealand in an unprecedented bid to defend the Rugby World Cup was announced, and to be honest there were no big surprises, save for one or two fringe players.

As far back as 2009 it has been SA Rugby’s very clear intention to defend the RWC with more or less the same personnel that originally won the Webb Ellis trophy in 2007, and the make-up of this squad represents this ambition: 18 veterans of the 2007 campaign have been selected again in a team that averages about 40 test caps with no uncapped players making the trip.

In all probability coach Peter de Villiers has probably known which players he would be making use of for the knockout stages of the RWC for at least the last 2 years, and apart from the very recent withdrawal of Juan Smithdue to an Achilles injury and concerns that after a long injury layoff key players in Fourie du Preez and Heinrich Brüssouw might not be able to reach the heights they attained as players in 2009, this plan still stands.

Brüssouw’s form on the field, coupled with Smith’s absence from it, has opened the door for flank Francois Louw to gain selection as a back-up fetcher, while wing Odwa Ndungane sneaks in ahead of other contenders for the extra berth on the wing ahead of Lwazi Mvovo and Bjorn Basson, both of whom most likely played themselves out of contention with the recent away leg of the Tri-Nations.

And that’s just about it in terms of surprise selections and omissions really. Baring in mind that both Louw and Ndungane – bar injuries to the premier XV – won’t be playing much more than around 80 to 100 minutes of rugby against the minnow teams in the group stages, there’s really not too much to get excited about. (I actually dreamt last night that Luke Watson got selected at the expense of Schalk Burger – now there would’ve been something to kick around the water cooler at work today…)

The only omission from this squad that I feel sorry for is Ashley Johnson. I’ve been very critical of him in the past for being a bit of a loafer on the field and not doing his fair share of the hard graft, and this past season he has proven me wrong. A strong Super XV season as well as good performances overseas in the away leg of the Tri-Nations in a losing cause should’ve been good enough to earn him his RWC cap, but on the back of this I also understand that from the perspective of the team dynamic there is only so much space for ball-carrying loose forwards in this outfit, while Francois Louw provides the necessary cover for a more direct fetching loosie should something happen to that King of Cat Burglars Heinrich Brüssouw.

In fact, the only person who’d be feeling worse than Ashley Johnson this morning would be Ard Matthews who ended up muffing the proverbial budgie with his cover version of Ras Dumisani’s rendition of the South African national anthem. This has already received more media attention than the actual RWC squad announcement, so I won’t climb into the poor guy on these pages – especially since my definition of a good vocalist extends to include that gargling maniac from Brazillian thrash/death metal band Sepultura, so what could I possibly know about good singers anyway? – save to make a suggestion: why not rather consider a MilliVanilli cover version next time instead? Sometimes a backtrack is just the ticket to saving us all from that excruciating deep cringe that can only come from someone screwing up on live national TV…

A. von Molendorff

Pic: supersport.com