Nienaber directly addresses the Handre Pollard conspiracy theory

Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber has refuted any conspiracy theories doing the rounds regarding the composition of his 33-man World Cup squad.

Nienaber sat down with the media on Saturday at the Intercontinental Hotel at OR Tambo International Airport ahead of his team’s big send-off.

They fly out to the UK for their final two warm-up matches against Wales on August 19 and New Zealand on August 25 before heading to Corsica for their training camp ahead of the World Cup.

“I think there are a lot of rumours flying around about the squad and about the players and that we have plotted to take four nines and we are going to get Handre in,” Nienaber said.

“And I think one must take time and explain it. If there are no injuries, this whole squad of 33 will come back.

“And the thing about Handre is that he is currently not injured, in other words, he is over his injury. He trained with us for two sessions now.

“But he is still on his way back.

“We have six years of data in terms of what he needs to do during a week to give us an opportunity to win a game.

“That might be metrics like how many kilometres he has covered, how much high-speed running he has done, how much acceleration and deceleration he needs to perform during a week to get him to perform physically on a weekend.

“Handre currently is probably at 20 to 25 percent. He has done two sessions with us, one attack session and one defence session.

“Lukhanyo is injured and he is still in the process of recovery from the injury.

“If he is recovered from the injury, he will go into ‘return to play’. Handre has recovered from his injury, he is now in ‘return to play’.

“We can push Handre to 80 percent, but I can promise you, the risk of us then losing him in the next three to four weeks is high. It’s a numbers game,” the coach explained.

The Springboks have not officially submitted their final squad to World Rugby as it only needs to be in by August 21 and Nienaber feels they are on track with their planning.

“We are all playing warm-up games, and history tells you that we normally lose a player or two due to injury.

“The public expects him to be the Pollard that won the World Cup in 2019, they don’t care that he hasn’t played in 16 weeks.

“And we are building him up to that.”