Springbok captain John Smit has been given the all clear to return to the playing field and has already been training for a month.

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The 102-Tests veteran front row forward, who has captained South Africa a record 76 times, is expected to be a central figure in the Boks’ defence of the World Cup in New Zealand next year.

Smith, who underwent a successful operation to repair a chronic cervical disc in Durban on September 22, missed the Sharks’s victorious Currie Cup campaign and the Boks’ year-end tour to Ireland and the United Kingdom.

The 32-year-old Bok skipper confirmed that he was given the all clear this week to start playing again.

“I have passed the three-month mark, which is the time they expected it should take before I could play rugby, and that was on Wednesday,” he said, adding: “I went to go see the specialist that did the surgery and doctor Stefan Joubert said it is ‘thumbs up’.”

Smit added that he has been training “flat-out” for just over a month now.

“It is flat-out now, the pre-season is pretty hard as everyone knows – November, December and January are the hard months.”

He added that it is good to finally have a pre-season where he feels good.

Smit admitted it will take careful management of all the Bok resources by all the franchises when the expanded Super 15 kicks off next year.

The revamped 15-team format – which starts on February 18 and finishes on July 9, an increase from 16 to 24 weeks – will see the number of games increase from 94 to 125.

“Every year, everyone says the same: ‘There’s a lot of rugby this year, how are you going to manage it?’,” Smit said.

“It is going to be up to coaches to have contracted well and select well.

“One thing is for sure, no single player is going to be able to play 80 minutes every single game every single weekend in the Super 15 and hen played 80 minutes, seven games in a row, in the World Cup as well.

“There will certainly be a time and a place for rotation and I think what will help is that it will create a bit of competitiveness among the positions as well.”

Smit, the most-capped captain in the history of Test rugby, memorably led his side to the sport’s biggest prize at the 2007 World Cup in France.

He played in his 100th Test against the All Blacks in Soweto earlier this year and his record of 102 Tests – which he shares with Percy Montgomery – was overtaken by stand-on captain Victor Matfield during the 29-25 win over Wales in Cardiff last month.

Matfield, who inherited the Springbok captaincy from the injured Smit, now holds the Bok record at 104 Tests.