Juan de Jongh’s status as a doubtful starter for Saturday’s Absa Currie Cup semifinal against the MTN Golden Lions at DHL Newlands has increased the likelihood of Springbok captain Jean de Villiers moving away from his usual inside centre position in the DHL Western Province team for the game.
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De Jongh, the hero of last year’s Currie Cup final win against the Sharks in Durban, is struggling with the hamstring injury that kept him from facing the Sharks two days ago.
WP coach Allister Coetzee has put De Jongh’s chances of playing at 50/50, but that may be too little when a player of De Villiers’ calibre is available. De Jongh was unable to train on Monday and probably won’t train on Tuesday either.
While De Villiers has played most of his rugby at inside centre, he has also played a lot at both outside centre and the wing – and both of them would be potential options for the semifinal depending on whether or not De Jongh is cleared to play.
De Villiers did play outside centre for the Boks when Frans Steyn was wearing the No 12 at the start of last season, and with big Damian de Allende in such awesome form for WP at inside centre, it makes sense to bring De Villiers in as his partner who plays off him rather than to reshuffle the combination.
Michael van der Spuy played in De Jongh’s place against the Sharks but although he is definitely one for the future, De Villiers will bring much needed experience to the team for a play-off game where Province will face considerable pressure because of the expectations of their own fans.
Already newspaper billboards in Cape Town are referring to WP needing to beat a Newlands bogey, which wouldn’t make sense if you looked at their home record this season – they have only lost once in Cape Town across both competitions, and that was to the Crusaders on Easter Saturday – but which is probably a reference to two consecutive losses in home Super Rugby semifinals.
Outside of De Jongh there are no other major injury concerns for Province building up to this penultimate fixture of the season, with flanker Rynhardt Elstadt making his anticipated return to training on Monday.
That leaves Coetzee with an interesting dilemma at loose forward if you consider he already has Schalk Burger on the bench backing fellow Springbok Siya Kolisi, while the inform Michael Rhodes can cover both lock and loose-forward.