Ex Superpsort
Coenie Oosthuizen may have done enough in his 46 minutes on the field against Scotland last week to earn him his first starting place in the Springbok No 3 jersey in Sunday’s match against France in Paris.
Springbok assistant coach Johan van Graan insisted at the first press conference since the squad’s arrival in Paris that he does not select the team, but he still said enough of an indication that Oosthuizen may well start at Stade de France.
With Frans Malherbe ruled out of Saturday’s Stade de France game because of a popped rib, Oosthuizen and Lourens Adriaanse are the two players in the bracket to start at tighthead.
Although he has been the regular tighthead back-up in the match day squad all year, Oosthuizen was thought to be the less favoured because Meyer has gone on record as saying that he needs to develop more. The Cheetahs player has played most of his career at loosehead.
However, if Meyer still says there is a need to keep Oosthuizen developing before being used in the starting team, it is a view clearly not shared by his assistant coach responsible for the forwards.
“The selection is the coach’s responsibility but I think that Coenie is good enough now, and has gathered enough experience in the position, to start in a test match,” said Van Graan.
“I thought he showed at the weekend that he was good enough. He spent 46 minutes on the field and in that time he made 15 tackles and he also scored a try.”
Although also reluctant to give anything away, scrum coach Pieter de Villiers seems as impressed as Van Graan is with the progress that Oosthuizen has made in his quest to be retreaded into a tighthead.
“I am not too worried about selection but Coenie has grown a lot and is good enough to play. He is powerful and he has made huge strides technically. I have a lot of confidence in Coenie,” said De Villiers.
Both coaches are happy with the way the scrums have gone on this tour even though there was a hiccup because of the poor playing surface at the Millennium Stadium, where the Boks started off the tour with a 24-15 win.
Although the playing surface at Murrayfield was as churned up this past Sunday, Van Graan felt it had gone a lot better for the scrum.
“There weren’t as many re-sets over this past weekend. I thought it went well. At one stage we were scrumming with six guys near our goalline, and we managed to pull it off and defend our line. That is a positive for the scrum. You can just control what you can, but we felt we had a solid base to play off last weekend, and when we needed to exit from our 22 Duane Vermeulen did really well off the back of the scrum.
“If you consider Frans Malherbe was only playing his second test and Gurthro Steenkamp and Adriaan Strauss completed a new front-row, then the guys did really well.”
But De Villiers warned that the acid test of the progress made by the scrum unit this year will come this weekend when the Boks play against the nation he represented at test level.
“France are always a tough challenge and they are rated as the most successful scrumming unit around the globe, as shown by them in the past year giving away the least scrum penalties and winning the most,” said the former French prop.
“But we have worked and we feel our systems are firing. So it will be great to end off the year with a match against a rated scrum so that we can be tested.”
I t would appear that Louw will be okay and the team will be announced on Wednesday.
Will be interesting as against France Meyer will surely pick the best side (in hs opinion) available to him.
