South Africa may have gone with the traditional 5-3 bench split for their Rugby Championship opener but Jean de Villiers believes that Rassie Erasmus could still have an extra forward at his disposal.

The Springboks head coach has selected a strong team to take on the Wallabies this weekend, but he has surprisingly not opted for a forward-heavy bench.

They tend to go with a 6-2 among their replacements and have on occasions named a 7-1, but those plans have changed for Saturday’s encounter in Johannesburg.

Another Rassie innovation

However, Erasmus is always looking at innovative solutions and revealed earlier in the year that Andre Esterhuizen had been training as a hybrid player.

Esterhuizen took on that responsibility when number eight Jasper Wiese was red carded against Italy last month and he provides the Boks with another option.

“You can look at that team and you sort of say: ‘Okay, a 5-3 split, we only have five forwards on the bench’, but you forget about Esterhuizen and the role that he can play. Damian Willemse covers 12, he can move into the loose forwards,” De Villiers said on the Boks Unpacked podcast.

Damian de Allende has been the first choice 12 during Erasmus’ reign but Esterhuizen has a big chance to lay down a marker this weekend with his rival currently on the sidelines, according to De Villiers’ fellow Springboks legend, Schalk Burger.

“The guy who it’s a really big test for is Esterhuizen. So many times in big games we see Damian de Allende,” Burger said.

“He’s got the hybrid aspect to him but I think at 12 first of all, if there’s a game where he wants to stamp his authority against Australia on the Highveld, there’s a great opportunity, both as a strong ball carrier but also as a playmaker, to have a massive effect on this game.”

Esterhuizen could find himself involved quite significantly this weekend, particularly on attack as he lines up alongside half-backs Grant Williams and Manie Libbok.

The selection of those two suggests that the Boks are looking to spread the ball wide and run the Wallabies ragged at altitude on Saturday.

Playmaking influence

“The way we’ve set our side up, whenever you see Grant Williams and Manie Libbok, you think, ‘we’re going to play rugby’. We want to score 40 points, that’s our goal for this weekend,” Burger added.

“We’re going to be ball in hand. It’s worked every time so far; when we pick those two our attacking shape gets on it.”

De Villiers feels that Esterhuizen may potentially add more in attack than De Allende and could form a good understanding with Libbok.

If you think of Andre Esterhuizen’s effectiveness when he was at Quins with Marcus Smith, Manie Libbok’s got the same ability from a playmaking point of view,” he said.

“Damian is definitely still our number one but Esterhuizen just attracts a little bit more from the defence