Bok Du Toit heads home

NEWS: The Springboks will be without two players for the remainder of the Rugby Championship.

On Tuesday, Springbok head coach Jacques Nienaber revealed that Thomas du Toit (prop) returned to South Africa due to a family bereavement.

The Springboks will also be without Rudolph Snyman (lock), who was unable to make the trip to Australia due to personal reasons.

With an expanded squad on tour and due to the time-consuming process of calling up a replacement with team members set to undergo a strict COVID-19 testing regime in South Africa and a mandatory 14-day quarantine period in Australia before being able to train, Nienaber opted against calling up replacements, which means there are now 41 players on tour.

The Springboks missed out on the Rugby Championship last year due to COVID-19 restrictions, and with the team now settled near Brisbane with a little over a week to go before their mandatory quarantine ends, Nienaber said his charges were fully focused on the task at hand.

"The Rugby Championship is a tough competition," Nienaber said during a virtual media conference from the team hotel on Tuesday.

"It features the best teams in the southern hemisphere, so we are expecting tight matches.

"We missed out on the Rugby Championship last year, so it is exciting to play in the SANZAAR group again, and it will be good to measure where we are against the Southern Hemisphere teams."

The Springboks, who won the title in 2019, come off two victories in a row against Argentina in Nelson Mandela Bay, and they will look to build on this when they line up against Australia in Gold Coast (September 12) and Brisbane (September 18) respectively, and New Zealand in Townsville (September 25) and Gold Coast (October 2).