Heyneke Meyer: Keeps the faith
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Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer has named an unchanged starting line-up for Saturday's Test against England at Twickenham.
Meyer retained the team that defeated Scotland 21-10 last weekend, with wing JP Pietersen and prop Gurthrö Steenkamp cleared for selection after picking up niggling injuries.
The only changes are on the bench, where Pat Cilliers comes in for the injured CJ van der Linde and Elton Jantjies replaces Morné Steyn.
Captain Jean de Villiers will become the fifth most-capped Springbok of all time and most-capped member of the 2012 squad when he plays in his 84th Test.
De Villiers will pass Bryan Habana on 83 caps to move into fifth place behind John Smit (111), Victor Matfield (110), Percy Montgomery (102) and Joost van der Westhuizen (89).
"I'm very chuffed for Jean," said Meyer.
"He took over the captaincy in a challenging year and has been a rock in our team. The fact that Jean has played in every Test this season, and finished all of them, is testimony to his amazing resilience and work ethic.
"Jean has been the glue that has kept our team together and for that I salute him."
The total number of Test caps in the starting team for the last outing of South Africa's tour in 2012 is 431 (158 in the forwards and 273 in the backline).
"It's great to be able to field an unchanged team," said Meyer.
"We've been able to show some consistency in selection on this tour and that is a good thing. The players have worked extremely hard on the training field and it wasn't easy to select the match 23 for each of the three Tests, but I'm happy that we managed to stick to combinations."
"The plan was always to give Elton a run on the tour. He's shown earlier in the season that he can play Test rugby. It's also good for his development as a player to experience the conditions here and to play in front of a big crowd like Twickenham."
South Africa: 15 Zane Kirchner, 14 JP Pietersen, 13 Juan de Jongh, 12 Jean de Villiers (c), 11 Francois Hougaard, 10 Pat Lambie, 9 Ruan Pienaar, 8 Duane Vermeulen, 7 Willem Alberts, 6 Francois Louw, 5 Juandré Kruger, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Jannie du Plessis, 2 Adriaan Strauss, 1 Gurthrö Steenkamp.
Replacements: 16 Schalk Brits, 17 Heinke van der Merwe, 18 Pat Cilliers, 19 Flip van der Merwe, 20 Marcell Coetzee, 21 Elton Jantjies, 22 Jaco Taute, 23 Lwazi Mvovo.
Date: Saturday 24 November
Venue: Twickenham Stadium, London
Kick-off: 14:30 GMT (16:30 SA time)
Referee: Nigel Owens (Wales)
Assistant referees: Glen Jackson (New Zealand), Peter Fitzgibbon (Ireland)
Television match official: Jim Yuille (Scotland)
Comments
Jako says...
i cant believe how pessimistic some saffers are regarding the boks (though i havent seen the scotland game, i must admit). they won this year's series with EASE against england, dont let the press fool you. i asume england will continue to be tactically naive and try to play the bok's game against the boks, and will look to their pack to win this game for them. after all thats what they did in the summer, and got well beaten and man-shamed. they dont ahve the power they used to have, and their backline continues to missfire, although they have lots of talent. i hope i'm proved wrong.
Posted 18:28 22nd November 2012
darthbok says...
the bokke , like hyenas are going to bring down this blesbok ( theblesbokisanantelopewithawhitefaceandpurplebodysorryforbeingsuchageek)
Posted 07:50 22nd November 2012
mfbLions says...
@TVaddict oh how i wish Heyneke Meyer would use his bench, and give the players freedom to run with the ball instead of kicking it all the time!
Posted 06:03 22nd November 2012
theGadflY says...
Lambie is probably the best fly-half in the world atm behind DC. Meyer is wasting his talent,he wants Lambie to be jst anothr Steyn.
Posted 04:10 22nd November 2012
flyman says...
Why oh why does HM persist with Kirchner?
Going to be a tough call with JP, we can only hope that Mvovo is hungry. Just hope HM does not try Taute on the wing. Its going to be close - Boks will not repeat last weeks second half and England will take points that are on offer (not like the brain implosion against the wobblies) even if it means winning ugly.
Posted 23:51 21st November 2012
cayzam says...
Boks to surprise everyone (except me), and produce the performance that we have all been waiting for. They will monster England. You saw it predicted here first.
Posted 19:16 21st November 2012
martinmarais78 says...
georgesmith, dont bother old Naaikok/Daibok is a Brit with an identity crisis hiding in England thinking he is a Saffa and our biggest 'gift' as a true patriot Bok/Shark supporter... He must have smoked too much of tha stuff on his brief visit to Durban where he got messed up about his nationality. Totally useless to the country and its people!! Funny, how quite he went after the Currie cup final! NO congrats to our Province, a real sour loser as well!!
Anyway, back to the rugby. Lambie is the weak link with a very tired JDV in our back line. The Sharks typically went so GA-GA when FINALLY a 'good' talent from Durban came through there own crappy Natal systems that they fooled the rest of the country with there Lambie hype!
On true merrit, I am not even sure Lambie would even get into a England National League 3 team! TOTALLY OVERATED!!
Posted 16:58 21st November 2012
boksmashoffice says...
its fair to say Kirchner will be FB as long as he is fit and HM is in charge. Soo frustrating to see him there. Taute is a better option there. Hopefully another win.
Posted 16:21 21st November 2012
JayStarr says...
Thank goodness those injured players came through... We couldn't have afforded any more changes to an already uncohesive team. Now they can try and improve on last week by, for example, using their back line... Just a thought.
Posted 15:45 21st November 2012
5Lock4ward says...
Remember earlier in the season when hooker looked to be a weak spot for the Boks after du Plessis went down? The Boks are just so deep. If only PDV had had the sense to abandon the old guard in the build up to the last RWC and used his 4 years in charge to blood the current regime and build their chemistry.
Posted 14:02 21st November 2012
rugbyphile says...
This game may come down to goalkicking and tactical kicking to a lesser extent. For the first you would think Flood and Lambie more or less on a par--SA have Pienaar and Jantjes if anything happens to Lambie--not sure who England's other kickers would be--Farrell I guess. As regards tactical kicking, on past showing SA will be well below England, and as regards decision making and general play Care should outplay the slow- thinking Pienaar. England ahead in the half-back area, pretty even at centre with Tuilagi and de Jongh both good attackers while Barritt and de Villiers both pedestrian, at wing and fulback England ahead on form. In the forwards SA should win the lineouts but their scrum was awful in the second half against Scotland (though the weak link was vd Linde who has gone). The loosies ---maybe Louw is the difference. A close game--maybe SA just, but the way they are coached you would not put any money on them.
Posted 12:35 21st November 2012
rugbyphile says...
This game may come down to goalkicking and tactical kicking to a lesser extent. For the first you would think Flood and Lambie more or less on a par--SA have Pienaar and Jantjes if anything happens to Lambie--not sure who England's other kickers would be--Farrell I guess. As regards tactical kicking, on past showing SA will be well below England, and as regards decision making and general play Care should outplay the slow- thinking Pienaar. England ahead in the half-back area, pretty even at centre with Tuilagi and de Jongh both good attackers while Barritt and de Villiers both pedestrian, at wing and fulback England ahead on form. In the forwards SA should win the lineouts but their scrum was awful in the second half against Scotland (though the weak link was vd Linde who has gone). The loosies ---maybe Louw is the difference. A close game--maybe SA just, but the way they are coached you would not put any money on them.
Posted 12:14 21st November 2012
daibok says...
@georgesmith - you are priceless. Totally irelevant. Are you related to Sharks fan martinmoron?
Posted 11:56 21st November 2012
TVaddict says...
Solid looking team with some great impact from the bench. Imagining the game at 60 mins still fairly even then you guys can; bring Brits on to run at us from everywhere, Coetzee to bring his brand of South African physicality, Jantjies at 10 for more creativity, Taute at 15 to actually bring some threat, Hougaard moving to 9 with Mvovo going to the wing for that added pace on the game. All players who will enjoy the game opening up and with the skill set to take advantage of it. Your bench could be the difference in this match.
Posted 11:55 21st November 2012
SACanuck says...
Not the best team available yet, but should be good enough to beat the Poms.
Posted 11:26 21st November 2012
rugby_rockstar says...
They've played at a slower pace than England so far this tour, BUT I'm still thinking their blitz will chew England to bits, unless we get our runners coming from depth.
SA love to beat us, so I'm expecting a rise in the Bok performance. Traditionally there's a clash of big forward packs. Englands pack doesn't have that monster pack factor beyond the front row anymore, so SA will give us a lesson and hopfully teach us by example not to stray away from our strengths. We're probably going to get a beating, but it's for our own good. We need warhorses like Louis Deacon in the squad and at 29 years old there's no reason not to pick him for the 6 nations. You won't get close to beating Sides like the boks without him, the recent results say it all really.
Posted 11:12 21st November 2012
BokAvenger says...
I would have brought in Bakkies Botha just for this game.
Posted 10:59 21st November 2012
georgesmith says...
No M.Steyn. I'm not surprised. E. Jantjies is quality and promising player. It ain't viable to carry over-rated veteran and under-performing players. Wallabies need to do this. Get players like grandpa N.Sharpe, D. Dennis, S. Kepu and others out. There is high expectations from individual players at Test level.
Posted 10:59 21st November 2012