{"id":11042,"date":"2012-06-03T10:39:13","date_gmt":"2012-06-03T08:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/06\/rugby-meyer-yet-to-name-a-springbok-captain\/"},"modified":"2012-06-03T10:39:13","modified_gmt":"2012-06-03T08:39:13","slug":"rugby-meyer-yet-to-name-a-springbok-captain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/rugby-meyer-yet-to-name-a-springbok-captain\/","title":{"rendered":"Rugby-Meyer yet to name a Springbok captain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Ken Borland<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">PRETORIA, South Africa, June 2<\/span> (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa<br \/>\ncoach Heyneke Meyer failed to pick a captain and dropped<br \/>\nopenside flanker Heinrich Brussow on Saturday when he named a<br \/>\nsquad blending youth with experience to face England in a<br \/>\nthree-test series.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Meyer is faced with a leadership vacuum after former captain<br \/>\nJohn Smit left to play in England while former vice captain<br \/>\nVictor Matfield retired from all rugby after last year&#8217;s World<br \/>\nCup.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Stormers captain Schalk Burger, who appears to be the most<br \/>\nlikely choice for the Springboks captaincy, has been battling a<br \/>\nknee injury and had already been ruled out of the series.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Local media had reported that former scrumhalf Fourie du<br \/>\nPreez, who has been playing in Japan, and Matfield could have<br \/>\nbeen tempted out of retirement as a stop-gap captaincy measure<br \/>\nfor the series that begins on June 9 in Durban.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>However Meyer said on Saturday that having spoken to du<br \/>\nPreez, the scrumhalf had said he was not up to the rigors of<br \/>\ninternational rugby.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have a lot of respect for Fourie but he knows my motto is<br \/>\nteam first. I had a few meetings with him and he said he wasn&#8217;t<br \/>\n100 percent sure he&#8217;s at his best, having not played for<br \/>\ntwo-and-a-half months,&#8221; the coach told a news conference.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was a hard decision to leave him out but it shows the<br \/>\ncharacter of the man that he told me to go with the youngsters<br \/>\nif I felt he was a 50-50 selection. I will now chat to the<br \/>\nsenior players before naming my captain.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Meyer also dropped Brussow, who is widely considered one of<br \/>\nthe best openside flankers in the world, because changes to the<br \/>\nrule interpretations are resulting in more penalties at the<br \/>\nbreakdown against his type of player.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ken Borland PRETORIA, South Africa, June 2 (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa coach Heyneke Meyer failed to pick a captain and dropped openside flanker Heinrich Brussow on Saturday when he named a squad blending youth with experience to face England in a three-test series. Meyer is faced with a leadership vacuum after former captain John [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-11042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}