Latest Springboks update on the Pollard, Am injury rehab situation

Jacques Nienaber has delivered an injury update on two of the star names excluded last week from the squad of 33 named by the Springboks for the upcoming Rugby World Cup. The South Africans will start the defence of their title with a September 10 pool fixture versus Scotland in Marseille and will do so minus two of their 2019 XV in Handre Pollard and Lukhanyo Am.

Pollard missed the recent Rugby Championship with the calf injury that he sustained near the end of the Gallagher Premiership season with Leicester, while Am has been sidelined by the knee injury he sustained in the August 5 Test friendly win over Argentina in Buenos Aires.

Both players are expected to be fit once the tournament in France is underway but that prognosis wasn’t enough for head coach Nienaber to name them in his World Cup squad. Instead, he named the RWC standby pair as two of the five additional players that have travelled to the UK for the two-game tour versus Wales and New Zealand.

It means they can continue their rehab for now under the supervision of the Springboks medical team. However, neither player will be allowed to travel to RWC base camp in Toulon unless someone in the official 33 picks up an injury and needs to be replaced during the finals.

What is the latest on their respective rehabs? Having announced a Springboks XV to face Wales that has 11 changes from last time out in Buenos Aires, including a recall for the fit-again skipper Siya Kolisi after his 17-week lay-off, Nienaber said: “Handre is not injured, he is returning from injury.

“His injury has subsided, but he is still in the process of return to play and with that, as we did with Jaden (Hendrikse) and Siya, there is a process that gets followed by the medical team and by the performance team.

“I don’t want to be too scientific but there is a certain load that a player must do during the week to try and get a performance on Saturday. It’s trying to expose him to that load and let him get comfortable with that load with his injury and try not to risk it so much that he re-injures himself, so that is the balance that we sit with Handre.

“Currently, he doesn’t have his calf injury. It’s an injury recovery. With Lukhanyo, it’s different. Lukhanyo is still injured. He sustained his injury two weeks ago and is still recovering from that, but he will go over the next week or two into the same process that Handre is currently in now.

“The next question will be what is the difference between him [Pollard] and Jaden and Siya? Jaden was probably cleared to play six weeks ago. They [Hendrikse and Kolisi] were cleared to return to full training and take contact and tackle and kick the ball and all those rugby-related stuff.

“Where the other guys are, a guy like Handre is still busy with that return to full contact, return to having a Test week, or a full-on preparation week. He is still building up that tolerance and load, so that is where he is currently.

“How long will it take, it’s like with any rehab thing: if there is a stiffness or a setback in terms of something that happens, then we step back a bit and we slow it down and then we add load again and see if he can tolerate it so it is almost like a give and take thing.

“They are not in the 33. If there is an injury and they go through full progression and they are fit and they are cleared by the medical team, then they will be up for selection but currently they have not been cleared by the medical team and they are not in the 33 currently.

“They have to get cleared first. That is point number one and we can’t select them. And when they are cleared by the medical team and they are up for selection then, if there is an injury in the squad then they can get selected.”

How close are they to being declared available for selection by the time of the opener versus Scotland if an injury does arise in the meantime to one of the chosen 33? “I’m not sure about Lukhanyo.

"Hopefully Handre if he gets cleared by the medical team. He is now in a process of returning to training and the next progression will be return to play, so he is still busy with getting into that facet of his rehab.”