Herschel Jantjies

Herschel Jantjies won his first cap for the Springboks against Australia in Johannesburg on 20 July 2019 and scored two tries in it. Four months later he was on the bench for a World Cup final. He was 23.

Scrum-half at Bayonne, and at 1.64m he is the smallest player in the squad by a distance.

Born in Stellenbosch, he came up through Western Province. In 2017 he took a short contract at the Scarlets in Wales, covering for Gareth Davies while Davies was away with the national side, played once and went home. His first Western Province start came the following year, and he made his Super Rugby debut for the Stormers against the Sharks on 7 July 2018.

2019 was the year everything happened at once. He took the Stormers No. 9 shirt, Rassie Erasmus called him up in May, and he was in the thirty-one for Japan. He played six matches at that World Cup, mostly off the bench, and finished it as Faf de Klerk’s preferred deputy ahead of the more experienced Cobus Reinach.

He won the United Rugby Championship with the Stormers in 2022, and the Rugby Championship with South Africa in 2019.

By 2023 he had slipped behind Jaden Hendrikse and Grant Williams and was left out of the squad for France. He has 24 caps, only four of them starts, which tells you exactly what his international career has been: an impact substitute trusted in big matches.

He agreed to join Bayonne in November 2024, arriving for 2025-26.

Quick service, quick around the fringes, and a genuine sniping threat close to the line — the two debut tries were both from short range. In a Top 14 where most nines are bigger than him, the tempo is the point.