Following his latest Springbok snub, Evan Roos must use the Stormers’ Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry clash at Cape Town Stadium to change Rassie Erasmus’ mind, writes DEVIN HERMANUS.
Roos has been left out of Erasmus’ 43-man squad building towards the Argentina Test on 8 August and next month’s four-Test series with New Zealand, sent back to the Stormers to face the All Blacks on 7 August instead.
The No 8 starred in the Vodacom URC and Investec Champions Cup last season, playing 22 matches, starting 21, scoring 14 tries and racking up 1,593 minutes and finishing the full 80 in 14 of those games.
Transfer that form to the Boks since his 2022 debut and the numbers collapse.
Roos has nine caps and 358 minutes for South Africa, with only 34 of those coming this year off the bench against the Barbarians, and 41 as a starter against Scotland – an outing that yielded his first Test try before he was hooked again.
The message, even if unspoken, is hard to miss. Erasmus has stuck with Jasper Wiese, and when pressed on X last year about Roos’ omission from the end-of-year tour, Rassie noted: “He’s a world-class player and will play many Test matches for the Boks, we just have two really good eights in Jasper and Kwagga [Smith] and in my opinion they are still delivering at a higher level than Evan!”
Duane Vermeulen, now in the Bok coaching set-up, has been blunt about what’s missing, saying they have worked with Roos on “the finer details required at Test level” and drawn a line between Stormers rugby and the Boks.
“With the Boks, there is a specific way of playing, and with the Stormers there is a bit of a French way of playing. They get away with it,” the two-time World Cup winner and back-row legend said.
Roos carries like he could kick-start a Boeing, but the Bok No 8 template – Vermeulen, Wiese, Elrigh Louw, Cameron Hanekom – prizes something else, and Evan hasn’t yet shown Rassie he can survive in the heat of the Test arena.
Former Bok boss Nick Mallett put it plainly before the Scotland game: Roos must shed “the stupidity of the mistakes he makes because of over-exuberance”.
Erasmus, for his part, still backs Roos to get there, telling one X critic last year that the 26-year-old “will probably make it in 2027”. Easy to say with roughly 14 months to the Rugby World Cup in Australia and Evan on the outside of the Bok camp looking in.
The pattern is now three years deep – Roos was also omitted from the Boks’ 2023 World Cup squad – and his form for the Stormers hasn’t shifted once.
RUGBY’S GREATEST RIVALRY: A tour like no other
Evan is running out of chances to convince Erasmus he belongs in the green and gold.
It’s now a Hail Mary for Roos to at least get his foot back in the door, or the writing is on the wall for him in the Erasmus era, no matter what he does at a club level.
Photo: Anton Geyser/Gallo Images
The post Roos needs an All Blacks Hail Mary appeared first on SA Rugby magazine.
Following his latest Springbok snub, Evan Roos must use the Stormers’ Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry clash at Cape Town Stadium to change Rassie Erasmus’ mind.
The post Roos needs an All Blacks Hail Mary appeared first on SA Rugby magazine. Read More
