Baby Boks win Super tug-o'-war
All of the Super Rugby players in the Baby Bok squad have joined coach Dawie Theron in preparation for the Junior World Championships, despite the best efforts of their franchises.
The Under-20 championships kicks off in the Western Cape next week and Theron's squad assembled on Monday, which means that the Super Rugby players in the group will be unavailable for selection this weekend.
This has left their Super Rugby coaches in something of a tight spot, as they are desperate to have their best players available for the last fixture ahead of the Super Rugby break during the June Test window.
The Sharks have lost the services of lock Pieter Steph du Toit and centre Paul Jordaan, the Lions will be without lock Ruan Botha whilst the Stormers will miss loosehead prop Steven Kitshoff.
Stormers coach Allister Coetzee was particularly frustrated by this ruling as he is desperate to have Kitshoff in the front row for the brutal clash with the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld this weekend, but despite the best efforts of the Cape franchise to negotiate a compromise with SARU their attempts proved unsuccessful.
Coetzee said that it would be in the best interests of the player's development to give him the opportunity to scrum against Springbok tighthead Werner Kruger this weekend before being released to join the rest of the squad for the Junior World Championships.
"Werner Kruger [Bulls tighthead] could possibly play at tighthead for the Springboks. It would have been a good opportunity for him [Kitshoff] to meet him against a player of that quality.
"We've lost a quality player. It's nice to see the young guys prove themselves against the best. Saturday's game is important for us and the Bulls but there's nothing we can do about it. The rule states that he must play for the U20 team. We accept it as such," Coetzee told Die Burger newspaper.
The Stormers coach said that it would have been ideal for Kitshoff, who has started every game for the Stormers this season, to have played for both teams.
"The plan was that he would start for us and be managed in a way that would be beneficial for both parties. He would have missed the U20 team's match against Ireland, but would have played the rest of the tournament.
"If the Baby Boks made the final we would have given him a rest afterwards," said Coetzee.
Sharks coach John Plumtree was equally keen to play Jordaan against the Lions this weekend, and initially released only Du Toit in an attempt to meet Theron halfway, but the dynamic midfielder has since been released.
The reality is that this decision was taken by SARU quite a while ago in an attempt to rectify the Baby Boks' dismal record at the tournament which they have never won.
SARU Chief Executive Jurie Roux told this website at a press conference on April 4 this year that the U20 team has been moved up the pecking order of teams by SARU in an effort to give them the best chance of winning the tournament on home soil this year.
Roux explained: "We decided almost a year ago on the path we were going to take for the next Junior World Cup. We had Dawie [Theron] in the seat for the first time, it was a new journey and he didn't have a lot of time to prepare his team and he didn't have a lot of players available at that stage due to the systems within South African rugby, but we have had a look at all of those systems and rectified all of those processes, policies and procedures and Dawie now has a team available to him that he wants to choose.
"In terms of South African rugby policies and procedures we have got a certain running order of teams and we had to ensure that the U20 side moved up in that order.
"That means that Dawie has got first right to them in selecting them for the junior tournament, and those are the policies that had to change," said Roux.
