South Africa changed their entire starting front-row just an hour before their second Test against New Zealand in Cape Town, with head coach Rassie Erasmus promoting three bench players to the starting side.
Gerhard Steenekamp, 39-year-old Deon Fourie and Thomas du Toit, who were all named on the bench on Monday, will now start the match. The original starting front-row of Ox Nche, Malcolm Marx and Wilco Louw will instead take their places on the replacements bench.
Late changes to the Springboks side
This is the latest in a series of changes to the South Africa side first named on Monday. Erasmus originally selected 16 players in his starting line-up, with captain Siya Kolisi named at blindside flanker alongside Paul de Villiers over fitness concerns.
Kolisi missed last week's Test in Johannesburg but was eventually confirmed fit to play this week. Two more changes followed later in the week: Cheslin Kolbe, not in the initial matchday squad, will now start after Kurt-Lee Arendse dropped out.
Handre Pollard, named at fly-half in place of Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, appears unable to start through injury. Feinberg-Mngomezulu has been promoted to the starting XV, with Manie Libbok providing cover on the bench.
Scrum battle in focus
The late front-row swap follows a week in which the scrum has been a major talking point. Du Toit had done press duties this week, and on Wednesday spoke about the upcoming scrum battle.
“It is going to be interesting, like every other week. We trained hard this week, and I’m sure the All Blacks have too, and everyone will try to bring their A-game on Saturday,” du Toit said.
“Look at the Lions game (against the All Blacks) you could definitely see they’ve been working on it and it’s going well for them, so we’ll do our best, but it’s something both teams pride themselves on.”
South Africa lost last week's Test 33-16 to the All Blacks, a result that ended a 12-Test winning run for the Springboks and kicked off the Greatest Rivalry series. South Africa dominated the scrum early before New Zealand gained parity and took control of the match.
All Blacks coach Dave Rennie confirmed this week he had spoken to World Rugby about the scrum, saying: “We struggled to get go-forward, so we need to be a lot better around that area.”
“Discipline-wise, we gave away way too many soft penalties, especially early in the game, which is disappointing because it’s something we’d spoken about; you give them an easy entry into your 22. So that needs to be better.”
“I think scrum-wise, obviously we’ve spoken with World Rugby around a couple of issues from our point of view. And so we think, scrum-wise, we’ll be a lot better, and that was a massive in for them last week. They are elements we need to be better at.”
