All Blacks legend Dan Carter feels South Africa will miss Handre Pollard in World Cup
Handre Pollard was part of South Africa's 2019 Rugby World Cup squad
©Steve Haag
All Blacks legend Dan Carter believes South Africa will miss the services of Handre Pollard in the upcoming Rugby World Cup campaign.
Pollard was instrumental in South Africa's World Cup final victory over England in the 2019 edition where he kicked six out of eight penalties and two conversions as well steering them to a 12-32 victory.
However, the 29-year-old was controversially left out of the squad for the upcoming showpiece event in France and Carter, who is one of 21 players to have won multiple Rugby World Cups when the All Blacks clinched the trophies in the 2011 and 2015 editions reckons Pollard's experience could be a missing factor for the Boks.
“Handré Pollard – you know that he’s going to perform in big moments in the World Cup [knock-out] games,” told SportsJOE.
"So, he’s a huge loss, for the Springboks to not have him there, because he would have learned so much from 2015, you know, when he played in his first World Cup and then obviously turned things around and really drove the Springboks to victory in 2019.
“So, he’s a huge, huge loss. A couple of the top ones are not going to be there.”
Earlier, South Africa head coach Jacques Nienaber insisted that the Boks will be better served by the young talent of Manie Libbok over Pollard.
“Handre is currently not injured – he has now had two full sessions with us, but he is still on his way back", he said.
“We’ve got six years of data by position now – whether it’s flyhalf, loose forward, whatever – on what a player in that position needs to do during the week to give us an opportunity to win on Saturday.
“That might be metrics like high-speed running, how many kilometres he has done, how many accelerations and decelerations to be ready to perform physically on Saturday. If you look at Handre currently, he is probably only at 20 to 25 percent.
“Handre is probably 20% to 25% of what a guy like Manie [Libbok] or Damian [Willemse] is doing during the week and then they play a Test match. We can push him to 80% but I promise you, the risk of then losing him in the next two to three weeks will be 80% or 90% – it’s a numbers game.”
