Jacques Nienaber will only announce the Springbok squad for the July series against Wales once all the SA teams are done competing in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship.
Should one of the South African teams go as far as the URC final, which is scheduled for 18 June, Bok players involved the tournament showpiece will have just two weeks together before facing the Welsh.
The three-Test series between the Boks and Wales will get underway at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria on 2 July.
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On Saturday, the second-placed Stormers will host Edinburgh while the fourth-placed Vodacom Bulls take on the Sharks in Pretoria in the URC quarter-finals.
“Our team announcement will only be done after the players have finished with their franchises,” Nienaber told Sunday newspaper Rapport. “Their focus should be there now, and they should not hear their national coach’s voice.
“Of course there is a certain group of players that we look at and we keep an eye on them with a magnifying glass, but we do not want to announce a team too quickly.
“We will have a partial phasing in of players in our group; the players will join us as their teams drop out.”
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Nienaber added that he was happy with how the local teams had performed in the URC: “We always knew there would be a few teams that qualify for the play-offs, and that’s where you want them to be
“This is the closest they will come to Test rugby in preparation for the series against Wales.”
Photo: Patrick Hamilton/AFP via Getty Images
