Class act Kitshoff could become Bok 'complicator'

Just how much more does Steven Kitshoff treasure yanking a Springbok No 1 shirt over his broad shoulders than a familiar alternative one ... with No 17 on it?

Saturday’s Rugby Championship clash with Australia at Sydney Football Stadium (11:35 SA time) should offer key clues ... and potentially even develop into a deepening, short- to medium-term conundrum.

The experienced loosehead prop and inaugural United Rugby Championship-winning Stormers captain earns his 65th cap against the Wallabies, as the Boks try desperately to halt a two-game mini-rot in the results column.

But it will also mark the first time this year that the “Spicy Plum” starts a Test: the national team’s seventh of 2022.

While the World Cup holders have a stronger philosophy than most international rivals for seeing the game genuinely as a 23-player one - their “Bomb Squad” of potent impact substitutes earned a fame all of their own at RWC 2019 - Kitshoff is bound to relish this reasonably rare opportunity to get stuck in from the outset.

Why wouldn’t he?

The 30-year-old has been largely viewed as a core element of the Bomb Squad since the World Cup in Japan: evidenced by only four starts and 20 appearances off the splinters from the beginning of that jamboree to now.

His last earning of the No 1 jersey was almost a year ago, when he had that role in the agonising, after-the-siren 28-26 Gold Coast defeat (12 September) to the very same Wallabies.

Subsequently, his forceful leg drive and scrummaging sturdiness - how often do you ever see him crumple in a reverse-gear heap? - have always been used off the bench, even if that has occasionally featured a call to action before the halftime whistle has sounded.

So Kitshoff cannot be said to have been under-deployed.

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