‘Hybrid’ Esterhuizen at flank the next innovation as Springboks continue to push limits

There was a moment in the media tribune when we suspected the Springboks might have 16 players on the field. The Bomb Squad had just been unleashed en masse.

Centre André Esterhuizen was among the eight replacements sent on simultaneously. But as the exchange of players settled down, it was obvious that centres Jesse Kriel and Damian de Allende were both still on the field.

The Boks wouldn’t make such a basic error as having 16 players on the field, would they? This was not New Zealand in a sevens game.

“Where is Esterhuizen playing?” “He must be at wing, or fullback?” No and no. “Hang on, isn’t that him at flank?” Yes.

And the penny dropped. Rassie Erasmus was doing Rassie Erasmus things again. The Boks were thinking outside the box. You had to have a chuckle because we’ve always known that Esterhuizen is built like a flank at 1.93m tall and around 110kg. Of course Rassie would do it.

The answer to where the next Bok innovation would come from was revealed in the opening game of the year. And it probably won’t be the last.

“You can call him (Esterhuizen) a hybrid player,” Erasmus said after the match with a glint in his eye.

“You can have two ways of looking at it. When you have a 6-2 split (between forwards and backs), you have Kwagga (Smith) covering the wing.

“But now, we’re just doing it the other way around – where you have a back covering a forward position, like André covering flanker.

“So if you have three backline injuries, a guy like André gives us the options now, because he has been training with the forwards and backs.”

Hopefully, no one tells that Australian pundit who is making a career of finding anything the Boks do as being against the spirit of the game.

The original Bomb Squad with the 6-2 split was bad enough for some sensitive souls. The 7-1 split nearly sent rugby into meltdown. That’s before you even consider four scrumhalves in a match-day 23, first-half tactical substitutions and scrums called from marks.

Performance

Once the realisation set in that Esterhuizen was at flank, it became about watching his performance in that context for the final 30 minutes of the Boks’ 54-7 win over the Barbarians at the DHL Stadium.

The Boks scrum didn’t have it all their own way at that stage. Whether that was down to Esterhuizen’s contribution to the scrumming effort is unclear.

In the loose, he seemed to grasp the positional needs of his new assignment well, making one great tackle as a Barbarian player came “around the corner” at a ruck. It was the type of tackle that hardly raises an eyebrow when Pieter-Steph du Toit makes it, but if you’re one step too late, then the player is through a hole.

Other than that, Esterhuizen was neither bad nor great. He was functional in the position.

“We started chatting to him (André) about five months ago, just to make sure he is a backline player who can also play forward,” Erasmus said.

“(Coach) Felix Jones handles his load very well in how much he does with the forwards and how much he does with the backs.”

Only the 31-year-old Esterhuizen knows if he fully buys into the idea, but he made the right noises after the match. Time is also counting down in his career.

After all, his options at centre remain limited with the brilliant De Allende continuing to perform so well. Esterhuizen also doesn’t have the versatility as a player to cover more than one position in the backline. But as a potential hybrid centre/flank he makes a stronger case for regular inclusion in the 23.

“It was a good experience. I trained at flank during the week, and it’s a good attribute for the future,” Esterhuizen said.

“I like to learn, and I’m willing to slot into the hybrid role, playing in both forwards and backs.

“It will help me as a player, and obviously it can help the team. Hopefully, we can see more of it.

“Rassie and I spoke about it and came to an agreement. I told him I’d like to try it – it gives you so many more options. I was waiting for the conversation because it had been brought up in the past. But I just shrugged it off.

“However, as you get older, you learn how you can slot in everywhere and how you can get yourself into the team more consistently, and you have to adapt with the players.

“I’m really looking forward to what can be.”

Good start

The Esterhuizen experiment aside, Erasmus was content with the first outing of the season.

The Boks endured an intense few weeks of training leading up to the Barbarians clash, and it showed. Despite the wet field and showers throughout the match, they were mostly slick and cohesive.

The set pieces, especially the lineout, functioned well; they attacked beautifully at times, the aerial kicking game was on point and the defence, intense.
“We came in here to be bold and positive and not let the conditions affect us and keep the ball in hand, and I thought we looked dangerous on turnover ball,” said captain Jesse Kriel.

“I thought we looked dangerous when we got the ball into guys like Aphelele Fassi, Kurt-Lee Arendse and Cheslin Kolbe’s hands. They’re special rugby players, they can make something out of nothing, and we saw that today.”

Erasmus added, “We won’t get carried away with this performance. Certainly, some of the newer guys showed us that they can do it at this level, but we’ll layer them in.

“We know who is going to play in Italy one and two, and certainly by the end of the Georgia game, which will be a grind, we’ll have a group of 45, 50 that have had some game time.

“Some of the half gaps and some of the line breaks we made would have stuck if the weather had been drier,” he said. “We can’t wait to play on a dry pitch and improve on our attack.

“We want to get better. The next three matches we’ll be trying to focus on us before we hit the Rugby Championship.”

Lock Jean Kleyn has been ruled out for the foreseeable future due to injury. DM