Former England fly-half Stuart Barnes has questioned whether South Africa could move on from Siya Kolisi as captain after a stellar debut month from Paul de Villiers.

Kolisi did not feature for the Springboks in July’s Nations Championship fixtures due to injury so a chance was handed to De Villiers, who grabbed it with both hands.

The Stormers youngster was one of the standouts for Rassie Erasmus‘ outfit as he featured in their wins over England, Scotland and Wales, wearing the famous six shirt.

Kolisi question

Barnes would not be surprised if this leads to a changing of the guard for the Springboks, so impressed he was by De Villiers, who he likened to two South African greats.

“Have we seen the end of Siya Kolisi as Springboks captain? A giant of the game, an all-time great, but all good things come to pass,” he told the Times’ The Ruck podcast.

“Has Rassie Erasmus found the man to take South Africa to the next level in Paul de Villiers? We haven’t seen Kolisi, what we have seen is his replacement, a young man, come on and be as good as Ruben Kruger and Heinrich Brussow were.”

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Erasmus has again blooded a whole host of players during a block of matches with 49 in action this month, 43 in the Nations Championship games. There were six debutants including De Villiers but it seemingly had little effect on the team’s performances as they continue to build towards a potential Rugby World Cup three-peat in Australia.

Barnes credited the Springboks head coach for how he smoothly moves his side on and believes that could spell trouble for Kolisi, due to how De Villiers took his chance.

“It’s almost as if Erasmus has seen this opportunity to just slide through the next generation,” he continued. “Obviously, there’ll be this view that you can’t drop Siya Kolisi, but the great coaches, at some stage everybody has to be dropped because you can’t be the best forever.”

Seamless changes

He added: “It’s fascinating and I wonder, Erasmus is the sort of coach who is so good at just sliding this through to the point we don’t even end up writing a column about they have got a new captain. It just happens. One minute he’s there, the next he’s not, and South Africa move seamlessly on towards the third World Cup.”

As mentioned, South Africa won their opening Nations Championship fixtures and sit above New Zealand atop of the Southern Hemisphere standings on points difference.

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The competition will return in November but before then the Springboks meet Argentina on August 8 before facing off with the All Blacks in a monumental four-Test series.

Kolisi is set to return from the hamstring injury that kept him out of the first leg of the inaugural tournament and will hope to play a key part in the Greatest Rivalry games.

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