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Is Pollard The Right Choice To Face The All Blacks?

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Handre Pollard

The latest news out the Springbok camp is the exclusion of pivot Morné Steyn, and the subsequent replacement of rookie Handré Pollard. There is no doubt that Saturdays test in Wellington is going to be South Africa’s toughest challenge in their 2014 season. Many thought that with the huge prospect of facing the All Blacks would warrant Morné Steyn’s start, but Heyneke Meyer and his coaching staff had other ideas.

Handré Pollard is a quality flyhalf, has a reliable boot, and attacks the line aggressively. You would think that a player of his nature is perfect for igniting a backline on slaught. He is calm on defence and a sure tackler. It would be cruel to heavily critise his performance in the opening matches against Argentina, but he did make some crucial errors which exposed his inexperience to some extent.

With that being said, Heyneke has entrusted the responsibility on the young man, also referred to by many as the “Future of South African rugby”. It’s still unclear what happened with Morné Steyn, no injuries were reported but he has been left out of the entire match day 22. 

The rest of the team remains unchanged from last week. The forwards looked much better in Perth than they did in Salta. The scrums were steadfast and Victor Matfield controlled the lineouts effectively.

There is no reason to emphasis the importance of set piece. The Boks will be tested in every aspect of the game on Saturday and if they can’t secure clean first-phase ball, Pollard’s daunting job will become that much harder. The midfield combination of Jean de Villiers and Jan Serfontein seemed to hold nicely in defense and even surprised to set up Cornell Hendricks’ try.

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Ruan Pienaar is still a major concern in the selections – especially with a South African pack that haven’t been able to impose their dominate play in the Championship this season. Ruan Pienaar performs extremely well with a pack moving forward and constantly getting over the advantage line. When his forwards aren’t allowing him access to quick-ball, he tends to struggle – there will be times when the All Blacks compete for the ball and one wonders how that may impact the Boks’ gameplan. 

Apart from that, Jean De Villers earns his test ton. What a great servant to South African rugby and world rugby as a whole.

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