Next long-term Springboks hooker: Rassie Erasmus forced to look beyond Malcolm Marx amid injury concern and years of indecision
Springboks hooker Malcolm Marx and an inset of head coach Rassie Erasmus.
Malcolm Marx is under an injury cloud ahead of the 2026 international season, with the Springboks hooker sustaining a setback in Kubota Spears’ 26-24 victory over the Wild Knights.
The 2025 World Rugby Player of the Year was unable to return for the second half of the Japan Rugby League One knockout match after sustaining what is believed to be a bicep injury.
There has yet to be an update on the severity of the setback, but it will leave Springboks head coach Rassie Erasmus and his staff sweating over one of the team’s most important players. Even if the injury is more of a scare than a serious setback, Marx’s possible unavailability again emphasises the fact that South Africa need to invest in their hooking depth ahead of the 2027 Rugby World Cup.
The Boks head coach admitted that South Africa were ‘a bit thin at hooker’ at the end of 2023, but since then, opportunities for up-and-comers have been few and far between.
It’s one of the few positions where Erasmus and his staff haven’t aggressively blooded new talent, and the reason for that is twofold: hooker is an incredibly demanding and technical position which is only emphasised at the highest level, and it’s hard not to field the best hooker in the world when he is fit, firing and dominating.
The standards that Marx and Bongi Mbonambi have set in the jersey have also been incredibly difficult for many to meet, but several players are starting to really come into their own and press their claims.
With Mbonambi seemingly falling out of favour for the first time since 2018 last year, Erasmus could really be looking at 2026 as the year where he truly decides who will be the successor to the double World Cup winner and become the new double threat with Marx.
And Erasmus is not short on options.
Jan-Hendrik Wessels
If Marx is sidelined for an extended period of time, one can expect Jan-Hendrik Wessels to step up into the hooking role more often than at loosehead prop this year. The versatile Bulls star is held in high regard with Erasmus and scrum guru Daan Human, and rightly so; he is in the mould of a modern-day front-rower with extreme athleticism and work-rate but has the scrummage capabilities to fulfil the Springboks’ requirements too.
A suspect ban limited his international involvement last year, but Wessels is bound to be in the mix this year and is a player that is bound to get a ton of opportunities, building his Test experience ahead of the World Cup. The 25-year-old has a long international career ahead of him, and while the Springboks coaching team will continue to deploy him at loosehead, he may find more consistent minutes at hooker this year.
Johan Grobbelaar
Staying in Pretoria, Johan Grobbelaar is another frontrunner for more regular minutes in the middle of the Springboks front-row this year, having ended 2025 as Marx’s back-up. The 28-year-old has been on the fringe or in and out of the squad since before the 2023 World Cup, eventually making his Test debut against Portugal in 2025.
It is understood that his size and scrummaging prowess were the two areas of his game that were holding him back from selection, but he has seemingly addressed those and featured against Japan, France, Italy, Ireland and Wales in November.
Grobbelaar offers the Springboks a relentless work-rate, accurate set-piece and decent breakdown threat, and while he isn’t quite at the standard of Marx, he is certainly not out of his depth at international level.
Marnus van der Merwe
A Test debutant last year, Munster-bound Marnus van der Merwe is a hooker seemingly cut from the same cloth as Marx with his excellence at the breakdown, aggression in contact and set-piece work. However, he clearly has work-ons to be a Springbok regular as he wasn’t recalled for the end-of-year tour after featuring against Georgia, Australia and New Zealand.
Andre-Hugo Venter
Anyone who has watched the Stormers play this season will quickly tell you how good a campaign Andre-Hugo Venter has had in both the United Rugby Championship and Investec Champions Cup.
The 24-year-old has been a mainstay in John Dobson’s front-row and has often been asked to go deep into match, often leading the tackle count while producing sharp, accurate lineout throws. The quality of the South African franchises’ scrums has to be factored in too, with all four sides thriving in the set-piece. Venter earned his first cap off the bench against Portugal in 2024 and hasn’t been recalled to a training camp since, but is a player that the Bok coaching team will be keeping an eye on, even if he only becomes a regular after Australia 2027.
There will be those who highlight the optics of Erasmus selecting his daughter’s boyfriend and the son of his former teammate, but Venter would be absolutely deserving of a recall if it were to come his way in 2026.
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Joseph Dweba
Joseph Dweba is a curious case. For much of Jacques Nienaber’s stint as the Springboks head coach, Dweba was the third-choice hooker behind Marx and Mbonambi, but when it came time to select a World Cup squad, the coaching team opted against three hookers and gambled on Deon Fourie and Marco van Staden, more on him later, filling in.
After investing six caps into Dweba, Erasmus has completely overlooked the now-Exeter-based front rower, with his last Test appearance coming in August 2023. The 30-year-old was also dropped from the Player of National Interest funding program, which meant that the Stormers were unable to keep him on their books, forcing the move to Sandy Park.
Most would assume that would spell the end of a player’s international career, but Erasmus is renowned for surprising selections, and would it really be that surprising that he was continually keeping tabs on Dweba?
The Springbok hooker has been a solid signing for Rob Baxter, with the experienced coaching backing his number two for a Test recall.
“I don’t see Joseph being any different in his career. I think there’s a lot left in him,” he told BBC Sport in September last year, referencing how Nic White revitalised his international career at Exeter too.
“He thinks there’s a lot left in him, and he’s training and playing like there’s a lot left there. I’d like to think you’ll see a really revived Joseph Dweba this season. I’d like to think you’d see him as a revived player in a revived Exeter Chiefs team.”
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Marco van Staden
A hybrid trial that started before the 2023 World Cup, was tested at the tournament, stalled for a year, but is now a fully fledged project that is being utilised at the Bulls.
Marco van Staden’s importance to the Springboks has grown year on year, and it is due another bump in 2026, whether Marx’s injury is serious or not. The 30-year-old has filled in at hooker regularly this season for the Bulls following the injury to Akker van der Merwe and has had no issues at scrum time and is yet to miss a lineout throw.
What the 33-Test cap Bok brings to the table that the other candidates don’t is a breakdown presence that matches that of Marx. That is a real strength of the flanker’s game, who is also a powerful tackler and carrier.
He is bound to be in the mix regardless, but one has to wonder whether Erasmus will be considering Van Staden as a serious option at hooker going forward and not just as a flanker-hooker hybrid. Considering his age, moving to the front-row could well extend Van Staden’s international career, especially when one considers the amount of talented loose forwards coming through the system.
Marx and Mbonambi’s dominance of the hooker role under Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber
Esethu Mnebelele
Speaking of the talented youth coming through the system, Erasmus could well hand Junior Springbok Esethu Mnebelele a Test debut before he even makes his professional bow. The head coach was willing to do so last year already when Marx was unavailable for the final Test of the 2025 against Wales, but injury denied Mnebelele.
The Sharks-bound front-rower is currently sidelined with an ankle injury but is clearly in the Springboks coaches’ thinking with an eye to the future. After years of indecision about who will be Mbonambi’s successor or Marx’s back-up, Mnebelele offers an incredibly long-term option.
The real question will be whether it’s worth fast-tracking him into the Test set-up or if it will be more beneficial that he plays in the World Rugby U20 Championship under Kevin Foote once he has recovered from injury, with the opportunity to play Currie Cup and the start of the United Rugby Championship too.
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Wild card shouts
There are plethora of URC hookers that could well come into the reckoning too, starting with Sharks front-rower Eduan Swart. There is not too much flash or excitement to the 25-year-old’s game, but last season, he was consistently effective for the Sharks in the URC, whether featuring off the bench or in the starting line-up. Ditto for the Stormers’ JJ Kotze. Lions hooker PJ Botha has impressed around the park for the Jo’burgers, but his lineout darts are holding his game back.
The Boks could also invest in another hybrid project with Stormers back-rower Paul de Villiers, who could well be in the mix solely as a flanker too. While Ethan Bester is another wild card, considering that he has been sidelined for so long.
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