Watch every second of the Greatest Rivalry series live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\n“Regarding injuries, there are probably only two doubtful players, Kolisi and Nche,” Erasmus told reporters.<\/p>\n
Nche has not played since suffering a knee injury in a Nations Championship triumph over England in Johannesburg during July.<\/p>\n
The first Test appearance of the season for injury-prone Kolisi lasted only 25 minutes in Argentina this month before a hamstring injury forced him off.<\/p>\n
Should the duo be unavailable, Paul de Villiers could replace Kolisi with Gerhard Steenekamp stepping in for Nche.<\/p>\n
Erasmus said there were no other injury issues ahead of the eagerly-awaited clash between the two nations who have won seven of the 10 Rugby World Cup tournaments.<\/p>\n
The Springboks head coach traditionally names his matchday 23 on Mondays, whereas other countries wait until Thursdays.<\/p>\n
But Erasmus said that this week he will delay naming his team until Thursday, the same day New Zealand head coach Dave Rennie is set to announce his starting XV.<\/p>\n
“We know this one will be tough and the less time they have to prepare for our team, the better,” he said.<\/p>\n
Erasmus also dismissed reports that South Africa would try to slow down the Test to upset New Zealand, who have played high tempo, ball-in-hand rugby in three tour wins over franchises.<\/p>\n
‘Balance’ –<\/p>\n
“If you go look at our last two games against New Zealand, in Auckland and Wellington last year, were those two games slow?” asked Erasmus.<\/p>\n
“We think there is a certain way to win World Cups, which is a grind (slower game style).<\/p>\n
“So, we have tried to find a balance between that and a quicker style. It is a system that we can fall back on in clutch situations.<\/p>\n
“Since (attack coach) Tony Brown has been with us we feel we have been attacking all right and not too badly.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, New Zealand have suffered another blow with a knee cartilage injury forcing prop Ollie Norris to return home.<\/p>\n
Loosehead Ethan de Groot and tighthead Tyrel Lomax were the starting props when New Zealand beat Ireland in their last Test on July 18.<\/p>\n
Norris is the fourth All Black, after hooker George Bell, centre Billy Proctor and wing Caleb Clarke, to have his tour cut short by injury.<\/p>\n
Saula Ma’u replaces Norris, and scrum-half Noah Hotham has been added to the touring squad as cover for Cortez Ratima.<\/p>\n
Ratima, one of two All Blacks to play in the three pre-Test victories over the Stormers, Sharks and Bulls, is nursing a knee injury.<\/p>\n
First choice scrum-half Cam Roigard missed all three build-up matches in South Africa due to injury, but Rennie is confident he will be available for the first Test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Africa captain and flanker Siya Kolisi and prop Ox Nche could miss the first Test against New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[10751,64,63,760,85,2995],"class_list":["post-859057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-all-blacks","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-springboks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}