Handre Pollard was fit, in camp and not in the matchday 23 at Ellis Park. Siya Kolisi was fit enough to play and left out as a precaution. Rassie Erasmus has six days to decide whether either of those calls stays the same.
The Springboks second Test team has to do something the first one could not: turn forward dominance into points. South Africa need three wins in a row now, and that does not allow for another week of eleven visits to the 22 producing one try.
Here is what is actually on the table, position by position.
Fly-half: Pollard is the change that costs nothing
Erasmus named four fly-halves for this series — Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Manie Libbok, Pollard and Vusi Moyo. He started Feinberg-Mngomezulu, benched Libbok and left a double World Cup winner out of the 23 completely.
The logic held on Friday. Pollard’s game is control, territory and points, and the plan was clearly to play with more ambition than that.
Cape Town is a different question. New Zealand have a series lead to protect, which means a tighter, slower, more territorial Test — the exact match Pollard was built for. And South Africa now know what happens when they own the collisions and have nobody to convert it.
Then there is the kicking tee. Cheslin Kolbe took all four shots at goal at Ellis Park and landed them all, rather than the fly-half. Erasmus gave a straightforward reason afterwards, that Kolbe is his most accurate kicker at this stage, and it was only the third time in 51 Tests that Kolbe had been handed full duties.
Take the explanation at face value and it still leaves a fly-half who is not trusted with the three points in a Test his side lost by seventeen. Pollard removes that question entirely.
Most likely: Pollard returns to the 23 as the closer, Feinberg-Mngomezulu keeps the shirt. Should happen: Pollard starts.
READ ALSO: Springboks player ratings: Jasper Wiese a 9 in defeat, and two marks in the fours
Scrum-half: three men who did not get a shirt
Before the team was announced, Grant Williams himself named the men he was competing with: Morné van den Berg, Cobus Reinach and Herschel Jantjies. He got the shirt. He was charged down for the try that lost the lead, and he was moved to the wing on 58 minutes.
Van den Berg is the obvious swap. His service is quick, and speed at the base is the specific thing missing — a dominant scrum is worth nothing if the ball sits there while the defence resets.
Reinach’s case took damage of its own: on for thirteen minutes, sin-binned for a deliberate knock-on with the match already gone.
Most likely: Van den Berg starts, Williams to the bench. Outside shot: Jantjies gets a first look at this series.
Back row: the Kolisi decision is the hard one
Kolisi has spent 2026 fighting hamstring trouble, picked up again in the win over Argentina on 8 August. Erasmus was explicit about why he was left out at Ellis Park: Kolisi trained well and could have been selected, but with four Tests to play the staff took a precautionary approach and went with Paul de Villiers.
In other words, he was available and held back. That was a luxury when the series was level. It is not one now.
And it creates a problem Erasmus would rather not have. De Villiers, two caps into his career, made twelve completed tackles by half-time — more than any player on the field in either jersey. He was one of the three best Springboks at Ellis Park. Restoring the captain means dropping him.
There is a second layer. The most-argued decision of the first Test was Pieter-Steph du Toit repeatedly turning down kickable penalties to scrum again, hunting a yellow card that never arrived. Kolisi’s return would move the armband as well as a jersey.
Against it: a hamstring that has broken down more than once this year, and a Test at sea level against a side that wants to play fast. Rushing Kolisi back for eighty minutes is how South Africa lose him for the whole series.
Most likely: Kolisi on the bench, de Villiers keeps the 6 shirt, du Toit keeps the captaincy. Should happen: exactly that.
READ ALSO: Erasmus refuses the ‘catastrophe’ label and names the scrum that lost Ellis Park
Back three: Kolbe should be fine, Arendse may not be
This is the one area where Erasmus may not get a choice.
Kolbe limped off on 58 minutes and the initial view from the camp was cramp rather than damage, which should make him available. Kurt-Lee Arendse is the bigger worry: he failed a head injury assessment inside the first quarter after his mouthguard pinged, and a mandatory concussion stand-down would rule him out of Cape Town altogether.
If Arendse is unavailable, a wing slot opens alongside Kolbe and the Springboks second Test team needs a fifth decision rather than a fourth.
Loosehead: how long does Ox Nche stay on?
Not a selection question — a minutes question, and it may matter more than either.
Nche came off on 46 minutes with the scrum dismantling New Zealand. Ten minutes later the All Blacks changed their own front row and the penalties stopped. South Africa never won another scrum penalty in the match.
A four-Test series means managing a loosehead’s body. It also means recognising that Nche on the field was the single biggest advantage South Africa held, and they gave it up voluntarily with the card they were hunting still in reach.
Watch for: Nche past the hour in Cape Town.
What must not change
Everything else. Malcolm Marx, Eben Etzebeth, Ruan Nortje, du Toit and Jasper Wiese were the best pack on the field by a distance, and the temptation to react to a seventeen-point defeat by changing five things is exactly the trap.
Damian de Allende and Jesse Kriel stay in midfield. Damian Willemse stays at 15.
The Springboks second Test team Erasmus should name
Two changes. Pollard at 10. Van den Berg at 9. Kolisi and Feinberg-Mngomezulu on a bench that already carries Libbok’s ability to change a game late, with a wing slot to fill if Arendse does not clear his protocols.
That is not a panic reaction. It is the smallest intervention that fixes the only thing that broke.
The forwards did their job at Ellis Park. Somebody has to be trusted to use it.
The second Test is at DHL Stadium on Saturday 29 August. The team is expected to be named on Thursday.
READ ALSO: All Blacks vs Springboks: the 5 moments that won it
