South Africa make three changes for Wallabies clash

South Africa head coach Jacques Nienaber has made three changes to the starting line up for the fourth round of the Rugby Championship game against Australia to be played at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday.

With Lood de Jager out of the game after sustaining a concussion, Marvin Orie comes at his place joining Eben Etzebeth at second row. The other change in the starting line-up sees Trevor Nyakane starts at loosehead prop replacing Steven Kitshoff, who now moves to the bench at the expense of Ox Nche.

As Cheslin Kolbe is yet to recover from his leg injury, Sbu Nkosi continues his place at right wing while Handre Pollard will continue to remain at fly-half despite a mixed outing in the previous game.

“This is an experienced group of players who knows what it takes to deliver under pressure, and we all know what we need to do to bounce back from last week’s defeat,” said Nienaber.

“Trevor is a Rugby World Cup winning prop and his experience, as well as Steven’s experience off the bench, will be valuable against the Wallabies, who place a big emphasis on the scrums, much like we do.

“Marvin has also been in our system for a while. He has been working hard at training, and this will be another great opportunity for him.

“We identified the areas in which we need to be more effective this week, and we have been working hard at training to rectify the mistakes we made, so the key for us will be to be as competitive as possible in every contest during the match so that we can lay a good foundation to attack from and to use our point-scoring chances.”

Nienaber expected another quality performance from the Wallabies and he looked forward to a great contest.

“Australia were desperate to win last week, and it showed in the way they played,” said Nienaber.

“There is no doubt the result would have given them confidence, so we are expecting to them deliver a similarly driven performance this week.

“That said, we know what we are capable of as a team, and we created sufficient opportunities to win last week, but we didn’t capitalise on them. So, we back our systems and structures, and it is now a matter of being as effective as possible in executing our plan.

“We are expecting another grind of a match, but we are ready for the challenge.

South Africa starting line up: 15 Willie le Roux, 14 Sbu Nkosi, 13 Lukhanyo Am, 12 Damian de Allende, 11 Makazole Mapimpi, 10 Handré Pollard, 9 Faf de Klerk, 8 Duane Vermeulen, 7 Franco Mostert, 6 Siya Kolisi (c), 5 Marvin Orie, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Frans Malherbe, 2 Bongi Mbonambi, 1 Trevor Nyakane

Reserves: 16 Malcolm Marx, 17 Steven Kitshoff, 18 Vincent Koch, 19 Marco van Staden, 20 Kwagga Smith, 21 Jasper Wiese, 22 Herschel Jantjies, 23 Damian Willemse