Bok No 10 jersey open sesame
THE Springboks and Bulls have been dealt a heavy blow after it was revealed yesterday that star flyhalf Handre Pollard will miss the remainder of this year due to a knee ligament injury suffered at training on Monday.
The 21-year-old Pollard has been ruled out for up to nine months, and is only expected back on the field at the end of October when the domestic rugby season concludes.
He will probably not be fit enough to travel with the Springboks on their annual end-of-year tour of Europe.
Pollard is the incumbent Springbok flyhalf and has been so for the past two years under former coach Heyneke Meyer’s tenure.
He would have probably retained his place in the team before the June internationals against Ireland and for the duration of the Rugby Championship, from August until the beginning of October.
The absence of Pollard has been further exacerbated by the injury to Sharks captain Patrick Lambie, who would have been the obvious choice to replace Pollard, but this has now opened the door wide for Lions flyhalf Elton Jantjies to stake a claim in the Springbok team, after being shunned for last year’s Rugby World Cup.
However, the most severe blow will be to the Bulls, who were banking on Pollard recovering from his shoulder injury in time to start in the Bulls’ first game of the season, against the Stormers in Cape Town in two weeks.
Pollard had been sidelined for the past few weeks by the shoulder injury he has been carrying for more than a year, but signs had been positive that rehabilitation was going to be enough, with no surgery required.
Although young, Pollard has amassed enough experience in his two years of Super Rugby to climb up the leadership ranks within the Bulls team, and had been named as vice-captain for the season.
Springbok scrumhalf Rudy Paige will now assume the role of vice-captain to Adriaan Strauss and marshal the backline for the entire Super Rugby campaign, starting with Saturday’s warm-up match against the Lions at the the Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane.
Bulls coach Nollis Marais conceded that the freak accident was “devastating” for the team and their ambitions in Super Rugby, as Pollard was the heart and soul of where the team wanted to go this year.
The battle for Pollard’s vacant No 10 jersey will intensify this weekend between Tian Schoeman and former Cheetahs flyhalf Francois Brummer, with Schoeman likely to get the nod ahead of Brummer after playing a handful of games for the Bulls in last year’s Super Rugby campaign.