Former Bok mentors leap to Elton's defence after poor show: 'They didn't throw Willie away'

Former Springbok assistant coach Swys de Bruin led the chorus saying Elton Jantjies should not be completely discarded from the national team after his poor performance against Wales on Saturday.

Bok head coach Jacques Nienaber first defended Jantjies immediately after the narrow first Test win at Loftus, saying the NTT Docomo Red Hurricanes pivot played just 30 minutes since January owing to a shoulder injury.

However, Nienaber was also the person who yanked Jantjies off at half-time when the Boks trailed 18-3, bringing Damian Willemse up to 10 from full-back and Willie le Roux in from the bench.

READ | Where there's a Will, there'll be a way: Welsh lock braces for Eben/Lood 2.0 duel

The move saved the Boks from an embarrassing first-ever defeat to Wales on home soil, as they scored four tries and a late Willemse penalty to seal the deal 32-29.

De Bruin, who coached Elton at the Lions during their Super Rugby heydays, also pointed out the Jantjies phenomenon of him being hung out whenever the Boks performed badly.

"I thought they threw him under the bus completely for all those reasons [that Nienaber mentioned]," Swys said on SuperSport's Final Whistle with Owen Nkumane.

"They didn't throw Willie away, and there's a lot of guys we didn't throw away when they had a bad game.

"Faf de Klerk didn't have a great game either, honestly. You can go look at his decision-making, apart from one or two things we saw.

"Somehow, with Elton, and I saw this for years, whenever you want to find a guy to hang up, it's Elton. We (Lions) won 78% of Super Rugby games with him at 10. That's highish.

"But you've got to play the guy for the right sort of game. I don't think starting him was the right thing.

"If you played him with 20 minutes to go, I'd