Meyer 'drops' Steyn

Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer has named unchanged starting XV to play England at Twickenham on Saturday.

There are just two changes are on the bench.

Pat Cilliers comes in for the injured CJ van der Linde and Elton Jantjies replaces Morné Steyn.

He retained the starting XV that defeated Scotland, 21-10, last weekend - with JP Pietersen and Gurthrö Steenkamp, cleared for selection after treatment of niggling injuries.

"The plan was always to give Elton a run on the tour," Meyer said.

"He's shown earlier in the season that he can play Test rugby.

"It's also good for his development as a player to experience the conditions here and to play in front of a big crowd like Twickenham," the Bok coach added.

Springbok captain Jean de Villiers will become the fifth most-capped Springbok of all time and most-capped member of the 2012 squad when he plays in his 84th Test.

De Villiers will pass Bryan Habana on 83 caps to move into fifth place behind John Smit (111), Victor Matfield (110), Percy Montgomery (102) and Joost van der Westhuizen (89).

"I'm very chuffed for Jean," said Meyer.

"He took over the captaincy in a challenging year and has been a rock in our team. The fact that Jean has played in every Test this season, and finished all of them, is testimony to his amazing resilience and work ethic.

"Jean has been the glue that has kept our team together and for that I salute him."

The total number of Test caps in the starting team for the last Test of year-end tour is 431 – 158 in the forwards and 273 in the backline.

"It's great to be able to field an unchanged team," said Meyer.

"We've been able to show some consistency in selection on this tour and that is a good thing. The players have worked extremely hard on the training field and it wasn't easy to select the match 23 for each of the three Tests, but I'm happy that we managed to stick to combinations."

South Africa: 15 Zane Kirchner, 14 JP Pietersen, 13 Juan de Jongh, 12 Jean de Villiers (captain), 11 François Hougaard, 10 Pat Lambie, 9 Ruan Pienaar, 8 Duane Vermeulen, 7 Willem Alberts, 6 François Louw, 5 Juandré Kruger, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Jannie du Plessis, 2 Adriaan Strauss, 1 Gurthrö Steenkamp.

Replacements: 16 Schalk Brits, 17 Heinke van der Merwe, 18 Pat Cilliers, 19 Flip van der Merwe, 20 Marcell Coetzee, 21 Elton Jantjies, 22 Jaco Taute, 23 Lwazi Mvovo.

Date: Saturday, November 24

Venue: Twickenham, London

Kick-off: 14.30 (14.30 GMT; 16.30 SA time)

Referee: Nigel Owens (Wales)

Assistant referees: Glen Jackson (New Zealand), Peter Fitzgibbon (Ireland)

TMO: Jim Yuille (Scotland)