Nienaber explains his latest Bok replacements bench surprise

South Africa head coach Jacques Nianaber has explained an apparent return to normality on the Springboks replacement bench for their Rugby World Cup quarter-final with France on Sunday, as the 7-1 split experiment gets shelved – for the time being at least.

The Boks have gone for a traditional 5-3 split instead of the more unorthodox 6-2 and 7-1 split that they’ve been using of late.

Nienaber didn’t expand too much on his thinking, despite being quizzed on the arrangement at a Springboks press conference in Paris.

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“If it’s 8-0, 7-1, 6-2, 5-3, it falls under team selection. We have selected a team, irrespective of the bench, that we think will give us the best opportunity of a victory on Sunday,” said Nienaber, who has chosen to bench Faf de Klerk in favour of Cobus Reinach, who starts at scrumhalf.

“If we select Cobus [Reinach] or Faf [de Klerk], I don’t think there would be a lot of raised eyebrows. France have got a very interesting kicking game and we feel using those two guys will give us the best opportunity. For this specific game, we feel Duane [Vermeulen] is the guy we will need, but that doesn’t mean Jasper [Wiese] won’t play in the semi-final. It is based on what we feel we need to get a victory on Sunday.

“If you look at a guy like Cobus, he is playing exceptional rugby, and Faf for that matter. It’s the same with Manie [Libbok]. Handre [Pollard] is a bit different, when you look at the cumulative number of minutes he has played for us this year. It is probably one game altogether, so he is slowly building up his minutes. And Manie is probably our in-form fly-half. I think we have lost one game this year when he has started at 10. The team performs when he starts at 10, it is as simple as that.

“The whole team selection was quite tough. If you look at the squad and the way we have managed the load over the last few games and the 10 tests we have played this season, the majority of our group has had between four and six games of exposure. The World Cup is spread over two months so we need to manage the squad so they go into knockout stages as fresh as possible.

“The beauty of our squad is we had the ability to rotate and rest and manage their load. Hopefully that will carry us through. Lukhanyo [Am] has not had much exposure because of his injury, but he looks good in training. It’s the same with Jasper [Wiese], there is no reason why they might not get selected in a semi-final. We believe we have a team to match the strengths and expose the weaknesses of France, although there are not a lot of weaknesses there.

“I know Handre came back and kicked 100% in the last game, but I think Manie did too. Any player can have an off day but when you play knockout games, you are not going to get many opportunities. So when we get them, we must use them.

“Since we started in 2020, our aim was to win the World Cup. Otherwise, why are you in it? Our aim was always to do that. Since the draw was made, we knew the quarter-final would probably boil down to France or New Zealand. It didn’t matter which team we played. It will be a tough quarter-final, the same with Ireland and New Zealand. I think all the quarter-finals will be really close. All the teams are preparing to be in the semi-finals and we go on from there.”

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