Charles Ollivon annonce la fin de sa saison sur Instagram

Settler colonialism? What exactly do you think the plans are? Crimea?

Do you need to study history before you can engage in the comments section of a rugby website? Of course not.

Is a decent understanding of relevant history needed for informed comment on the above article? Yes

Happy to clear that up for you.

Presumably PSDT, Eztebeth, Mbonambi, or Pollard could take on the role on a short term basis if Kolisi falls out of the international picture before they do, but none of them would be great long term options (they're all either too old to be playing every single game, or based outside of SA).

A good man. If he gets his form at test level right, I reckon he may be Siya’s successor as captain. He has all the potential to do so.

Queue the detractors…

Only the second Paarl Boys high 1st team captain to captain SA u20 and the Boks.

And in time to take more game time from Eben who needs to play less if he’s going to make it to 2027. More of Eben in the bombsquad please.

I've expressed doubts in the past about whether he'll ever be on the same level as Etzebeth, Mostert, or de Jager, but I really hope he proves me wrong.

Is the thinking that Snyman, Moerat, Nortje, and Etzebeth will likely be contending for the starting spots in 2027? Or is van Heerden developing fast enough to put in a challenge as well?

"I think the Eddie Jones style development player approach is whats called for"

(i) Why?

(ii) The churn of players under Eddie Jones was generally considered to be quite a bad thing. Do you want Guy Pepper, Ted Hill, Ben Curry, etc. to give up and go to France like Marchant did?

(iii) England already have a really young squad, and especially a young back row. If they do badly in the six nations Borthwick will probably lose his job, so shouldn't they prioritise winning in the short term and developing the players already in the squad, rather than bringing in newer, younger, guys?

(iv) England have a development tour in June. If you really want Pollock to be in the squad prior to graduating the u20s, why not wait until the summer?

I get that making loads of tackles is tiring, but so is building multi-phase attacks. I'm just worried England would get tired out from attacking, then struggle to get set when they're subjected to counter attacks.

The danger is that if someone like Guy Pepper, or Ted Hill, or Ben Curry gets left out of the squad they could easily go the same route as Tom Willis and put themselves into contention for a starting spot in the summer or autumn, and then you're causing issues in terms of cohesion by bringing a guy into the starting lineup who hasn't even trained with the squad in ages. It would be better to let Pollock keep playing with the under 20s for now, and bring him into the first team squad when he's ready to play.

Personally, I reckon it'll be F. Russell, G. Ford and S. Prendergast.