The Springboks completed a successful first match of their season on Saturday against Nick Mallet’s World XV at Newlands but the first proper international action for them starts this weekend as the Castle Lager Incoming Series gets underway with a Test against Wales in Durban on Saturday.

There often is debate and criticism about the make up of squads that Northern Hemisphere countries send on these mid-year tours which take place after their taxing domestic seasons. This year though the two teams due to play against South Africa have got good reason to be fielding teams which are going to be under strength in certain areas. The Test against Scotland falls outside the international window and so their players who ply their trade outside Scotland will not be making the trip over. The tour for Wales has been made much harder due to numerous injuries, no least to inspirational captain Sam Warburton.

This has been a very long season for the Welsh players, many of who were on the taxing but victorious British and Irish Lions tour of Australia last year, without a break after their previous domestic season. Some of the players based in Wales were gradually eased back into action during this season’s RaboDirect PRO12 tournament but the ones based outside of Wales would surely not have had this luxury. This has all taken it’s toll and as mentioned previously they have had numerous players with injuries that ruled them out of the tour of South Africa, with at least a dozen players not available.

The question has been posed about the possible make up of the Wales team for the first Test. Depending on how things go against the Eastern Province Kings (Tuesday evening at 19:00 SA Time, 18:00 BST) one could possibly see the starting fifteen composed of a mix of ‘A’ and ‘B’ team players with the brunt of the injuries likely to impact the forwards. The backline and front row (barring hooker) should be close to first choice. The bench could be more affected though and here we could see more of a mix of ‘B’ and ‘C’ team players.

However, it can also be debated for some as to who are ‘A’ team players and who are not. Dan Biggar is the flyhalf in Wales that I have rated highly for a while now, although Rhys Priestland did make me eat my words for a while with his performances, especially at the 2011 World Cup. This season though has seen Biggar come to the fore again, a combination of his own good form and injury to Priestland. Another example of what level player is in the team, is at fullback where Leigh Halfpenny is one the most valuable, if not the most valuable, fullbacks in world rugby. Yet his replacement Williams stood up admirably in his absence with a man of the match performance in the last Six Nations Test for Wales against Scotland.

List of injured Welsh players

From the list below we can see that there is a mixture of top players and fringe players out. The position which is hit the hardest is that of open side flanker where both Sam Warburton and Justin Tipuric are injured. Even if quite a few of the injured players are not first choice players their unavailability must be affecting Wales and they could have problems if they pick up more injures to more of their top players in tonight’s match against the EP Kings or in the first Test against the Springboks. What is also alarming is the high proportion (half) of shoulder injuries, is this indicative of how physical the game has become with players putting in huge hits against each other?

Big backline

Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer was quoted as saying that the Welsh team had big backs, in an article featured here on Rugby-Talk on Sunday. This is no exaggeration as a quick look at the backline that Warren Gatland could potentially pick for the opening Test shows. The average height of this backline would be 1.90m and the average weight 101kg. Many of these players would not be out of place up front in the back row, while some of them could even have featured in the 2nd row in Test teams of yesteryear.

The players, their positions and height and weight are listed in the table below (player stats obtained from WRU).