Springboks great Duane Vermeulen could realistically return to rugby this weekend and lace up his boots against Wales at the Principality Stadium.<\/p>\n
The double Rugby World Cup winner has been listed as player 25 for South Africa\u2019s final game of the year, with the match taking place outside of the official World Rugby window.<\/p>\n
Vermeulen<\/a> played the last of his 76 Tests in the World Cup final victory over New Zealand over two years ago, and has since joined the Springboks<\/a> coaching structures as \u2018roving coach\u2019.<\/p>\n Ahead of the match against the Welsh<\/a>, the Boks released several players back to their clubs in Japan, England, Ireland and South Africa, leaving Erasmus with just 24 players for the final game of the year.<\/p>\n It\u2019s standard for teams to list two extra reserves, sometimes more, for matches in the event of an injury in the build-up to the game or even the warm-ups.<\/p>\n Duane\u2019s our player 25<\/p>\n Prop Ntuthuko Mchunu is one of those players, and Erasmus has revealed that Vermeulen is the other.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been widely reported that SA Rugby was locked in discussions with the SA franchises around which players would and wouldn\u2019t be available to the Boks for the match, with clubs demanding a fee per player.<\/p>\n The monetary impact certainly factored into the selections as the Springboks head coach further explained that the 7-1 bench split ploy was not the ideal selection policy for this game, but one made through necessity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe team selection wasn\u2019t one that we planned at the beginning of the year to go 7-1 against them,\u201d Erasmus told reporters.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s actually the only guys available after discussions with our franchises. This team is almost forced on us.<\/p>\n \u201cOur player 24 is Ntuthuko Mchunu, and player 25, we always appoint two additional players, is Duane Vermeulen.<\/p>\n \u201cSo one injury and Thuks is in, and another injury and Duane is in. That\u2019s the chance we were willing to take for our franchises and for them to have a proper restart in the URC.<\/p>\n \u201cIt looks like we want to dominate with the pack of forwards, but our hand was a bit forced with this.\u201d<\/p>\n Springboks team: Rassie Erasmus deploys 7-1 Bomb Squad as South Africa aim to crush Wales with gargantuan team<\/a><\/p>\n