Monday, 30th July 2007 at 10:22 pm

Pierre Spies out of Rugby World Cup

Usually it’s a training injury that’s responsible, a freak knock or an over-enthusiastic team-mate inflicting the cruel blow (Faan Rautenbach was famous for injuring team-mates in training; by the time he left Western Province, the rest of the squad had started refering to him as ‘Killer’). But this time it’s something very different, and far more insidious: a clot on the lung has Pierre Spies out of rugby for eight months, which means no World Cup for Jake White’s first choice number eight.

That the clot was discovered is far more important than the rugby, but it won’t ease the disappointment of player, coach, or the legion of Spies fans who’d been looking forward to seeing the Bulls monster unleashed on the World Cup. How effective he’d have been on wet, heavy fields in the Northern Hemisphere was much debated; no, sadly, we won’t get an answer, as a different loose trio lines up for the Springboks.

Will Bob Skinstad now start at the back of the scrum? And who will replace Spies? Jacques Cronje? Pedrie Wannenberg? Ryan Kankowski? No confirmation from the coach just yet, as he still needs to run the options by the selectors; Cronje probably has the inside track for an unexpected trip to France. Bitter times for Spies, though, his health notwithstanding - and as the case with World Cups, he probably won’t be the last of the first choice 30 to be ruled out.