Highly influential Bok scrum-half to miss USA Test series

South Africa Women will be without Nadine Roos for their two-match Test Series against the USA Women’s Eagles in July.

Roos, 30, is a three-time SA Women’s Rugby Player of the Year and the 2025 Springbok Women’s Sevens Player of the Year.

Since Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025, Roos has been a regular feature for Cecil Afrika’s women’s sevens team that have gone from HSBC SVNS 3 to the HSBC SVNS World Championship this season.

A knee injury sustained in HSBC SVNS 2 action in March will keep Roos out of selection contention in July. Senior back-row forward Aseza Hele will return from a broken finger.

“Nadine is a proper athlete who just wants to get better, and she’s doing everything she possibly can to speed up her recovery while following the guidelines of the professional medical teams here,” Laurian Johannes-Haupt, Springbok Women assistant coach, exclusively told Rugby365’s Leezil Hendricks. “But Hele will join us in the near future.”

On Saturday 4 July, South Africa will host the Eagles at Johannesburg’s Ellis Park and again a week later at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria. Both fixtures form part of Nations Championship doubleheaders as the Springbok Men host England and Scotland.

It will be the first time that South Africa have hosted the USA on home soil. The two teams last met in March 2024, when the Eagles won 38-17 at the Trailfinders Sports Ground in London.

Johannes-Haupt, along with fellow assistant coach Franzel September, led South Africa to their fifth Rugby Africa Women’s Cup in as many years in June. Head coach, Swys de Bruin, opted to stay in South Africa to work with a select group of players in Stellenbosch.

The Springbok Women sealed the continental title with a 35-20 win over Kenya on Sunday afternoon. Jakkie Cilliers scored a try, two conversions and a pair of penalties in the victory.

Tests against the Eagles – along with a September clash against the Black Ferns at FNB Stadium as part of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry – will act as the Springboks’ preparation for the WXV Global Series.

With a month until the Eagles roll into the Guateng Province, South Africa’s assistant coach is expecting a stern challenge against a team that recently finished third in the Pacific Four Series on home soil.

“USA, we definitely expect a proper encounter,” Johannes-Haupt said. “Really, they just came from a Pacific Four [Series] tournament [Australia, New Zealand and Canada]. We haven’t had a big tournament like that to participate in.

“They’ve competed against bigger and higher-ranked teams. We’ve played in Africa, so you can’t really measure where we are compared to where they are. But we know we’re definitely going there to put our best foot forward and do the best we possibly can.”

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