These include a new centre pairing of Andre Esterhuizen and Canan Moodie, while Grant Williams and Manie Libbok will start at half-back. Willie le Roux is also set to capture his 100th test cap, making him the 8th Springbok to achieve this feat. Salmaan Moerat will take over the captaincy for this game as Siya Kolisi deals with a small injury. The Springbok team features seven players from the side that defeated Italy 42-24 in Pretoria last week. New captain, Salmaan Moerat, last captained the Boks in their 2024 Rugby Championship match against the Pumas in Argentina. Team coach, Rassie Erasmus, says the changes in the team have nothing to do with last week's performance...

“But the changes are more respect for Italy than our performance itself. We had a very experienced team and I guess that makes it really difficult for the opposition to play against but very easy to analyse in terms of how you know the strengths and weaknesses of opposition. It's very tough for us to really see where's there. Maybe you know where the players' individual strengths are but you don't know where their weaknesses are because you haven't played against them before and now we had one game against them and the guys who played last week could transfer a lot of knowledge to the guys playing this week.”

Springbok winger, Makazole Mapimpi, says it's good to be back in his home province,”I think all of us as a team, we're very excited to be back here. I think the last time we were here was after COVID-19, 2021, and also we did see the kind of the love, the time we arrived at the airport at the same time, and also whether we're playing in PE, or East London, it just hit different because people don't experience what other people experience to the city. So I'm sure people are very excited to come in numbers to watch us.”

--ChannelAfrica--