Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus will announce his squad for the Rugby Championship on Monday.
En oudergewoonte,there will be a few “wat soek hy daar?” comments.
What interests me is the captaincy situation, though.
Before Eben Etzebeth was handed the armband at the end of last season under Allister Coetzee, the man who skippered the Boks was Lions No.8 Warren Whiteley.
And with both Whiteley and Etzebeth - who I don’t see as a captain of any team, let alone the national team - out injured and out of the picture, the skipper’s armband was deservedly handed to Siya Kolisi during the England series in June.
Erasmus even went as far as to let Pieter-Steph du Toit captain the national team in the one-off Test against Wales in the USA.
I doubt whether that will happen again. So what do you do with your leader now?
That’s a bit of a sticky toffee for Erasmus.
In Whiteley and Kolisi, the Bok coach has two gentlemen of the game of rugby - both leaders I respect as people as well as rugby players.
For this reason, I believe the best thing for Erasmus to do is to announce co-captains at national level.
I believe that while both guys have the ability to lead the team on their own, they can benefit from each other’s styles.
It just makes sense.
As for some of those surprises, I reckon former Stormers hooker Schalk Brits, who actually retired from rugby a few months ago - only to be the rope in a tug-of-war between the Stormers and the Bulls for his services, won’t be too far away from this Rugby Championship squad.
With Malcolm Marx and Bongi Mbonambi numbers one and two in this department, Brits does add something different to the camp and will give the Boks a bit extra.
The Curwin Bosch situation will be interesting to monitor, but I wrote about the young utility back last weekend.
Same goes for Damian Willemse.
What I do think is that Rassie will make a big mistake if he decides to call up Lwazi Mvovo.
Here I believe Dillyn Leyds or Ruan Combrinck will bring so much more to the party if they are chosen to replace Sbu Nkosi.
Both Leyds and Combrinck are younger than Mvovo, meaning they have longer futures.
Anyway, it will also be interesting to see how many Lions players make the cut today.