Adriaan Strauss will captain South Africa in the upcoming three-Test home series against Ireland during June, new national coach Allister Coetzee announced yesterday in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town.
The hooker succeeds veteran centre Jean de Villiers, who retired from Test rugby after being injured during the Rugby World Cup in England last year and later joined the Leicester Tigers.
Northern Bulls skipper Strauss made his Test debut against Australia in 2008 and has been capped 54 times. He will lead the Springboks into a new era with nearly half the World Cup squad not chosen to face the Irish due to retirements, age or locals being preferred to those playing abroad.
Coetzee has spelt out what he expects from the 30-year-old forward who will captain the country that were the 1995 and 2007 world rugby champions. “I would like to make sure that the captain of the national side should be there to make sure that we win Test matches,” he said.
The coach last Saturday chose 12 blacks in a 31-man squad amid government pressure for the national team to reflect the demographics of a country whose population is 90 percent non-white.
His predecessor, Heyneke Meyer, stubbornly refused to embrace racial transformation, consistently picking 12 whites in his first choice starting line-up for four years. Other captaincy candidates included Bath flanker Francois Louw and two No. 8s, Golden Lion Warren Whiteley and Duane Vermeulen of Toulon.
Playing outside South Africa counted against Louw and Vermeulen with Coetzee saying “it was not ideal to have your captain based abroad”.
Whiteley has been in outstanding form and an inspirational leader of the Johannesburg-based Lions, the most successful South African franchise this season in Super Rugby. But he was not guaranteed a starting Test place with Vermeulen widely considered the best South African No. 8.
The appointment of Strauss covers only the internationals in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth as Coetzee seeks to avoid a trap that entangled his two immediate predecessors.
Peter de Villiers and Meyer made hooker John Smit and centre Jean de Villiers long-term skippers in decisions that came back to haunt them. De Villiers continued to choose Smit leading up to the 2011 Rugby World Cup when it was widely accepted that understudy Bismarck du Plessis was the top performer.
The same problem beset Meyer ahead of the World Cup in England last year with centre De Villiers starting Tests ahead of superior rivals.
South Africa play Ireland on June 11 (Cape Town), June 18 (Johannesburg) and June 25 (Port Elizabeth). It is the first Irish tour of the republic since 2004 when new Springboks coach Jake White plotted a 2-0 series triumph with his side winning 31-17 in Bloemfontein and 26-17 in Cape Town.