WP coach John Dobson was initially going to play De Villiers off the bench in the Pumas game, but said that the excellent progress that the Bok centre has made in coming back from injury has prompted a change in plan.
While the Bok squad was settling in after arriving in Australia, De Villiers took a full part in a WP training session at the High Performance Centre in Bellville and Dobson said there had been no signs of any swelling or any other ill effects from De Villiers’ appearance on the field in the last minutes of the match against the World XV at the weekend.
“Jean’s recovery has been much better than it was initially thought would be the case so we have decided to give him a chance to start against the Pumas,” said Dobson.
“We will allow him to just focus on his own game and getting comfortable playing again, so we won’t encumber him with the captaincy. The side we are selecting is also just a warm-up team, and it would become more than that if Jean was captaining. Jean tells me the last time he played in a Currie Cup warm-up game was 12 years ago and he played against (former Stormers forwards coach) Matt Proudfoot.
