Former Springbok prop Trevor Nyakane and the For the Love of Rugby panel have come down on the Bulls' Ruan Nortje as their pick to take over the Springbok armband from Siya Kolisi - and have backed the Stormers to give themselves a shot at a United Rugby Championship title that is now sitting on the smallest of margins.
In a fan Q&A episode recorded at the Palm Court Hotel in Mouille Point, Cape Town, the For the Love of Rugby panel was asked the bluntest of South African rugby questions - 'Who do you think will be the Springbok captain in 2031?' - and answered it with a clear-eyed read on the next succession.
"Currently, I'm not too sure who's going to be the future captain," the panel said. "If Sia makes it to the 2027 World Cup, he will - he'll make it physically. But if he gets injured, I'm not sure he's going to be the guy who steps in in the first place. I think Jesse Kriel's done an exceptional job as a stand-in captain, but for me there's no standout guy who I think can take over next. If I had to put a name in the hat, it'll probably be Ruan from the Bulls. The job he does at the Bulls is exceptional, and I think he'll probably be my standout guy if someone needs to be selected."
The pick lines up with what former Springbok hooker Steven Kitshoff told the same circuit a fortnight ago, and with what Bulls boss Jake White has been saying about Nortje's leadership style for two seasons. It also reflects how compressed the post-Kolisi captaincy market has suddenly become - 16 months out from a Rugby World Cup in Australia, the panel could only nominate one viable post-2027 candidate by name.
The Q&A also acknowledged the unpredictable nature of South African captaincy succession over the past 15 years.
"If you ask me 2010, who I think is going to be captain in 2019, I wouldn't have a clue," Nyakane said. "I wouldn't know who to point out. It's just that crazy. And there's so many people, or players - great players that are coming through in South Africa."
The panel was also at pains to underline that Springbok captaincy is no longer purely a tactical or on-field selection.
"It's a lot more than just being a good leader in the team," Nyakane said. "It's like your presence when it comes to the media, how you portray yourself to the world. You're becoming the face of the Springboks at the end of the day. That's a big task, because even in our era - to take it back a little bit - we've had great leaders. We could all become captains, but we needed one guy to carry the mantle and just to say, 'Listen here, guys. This is the face of the Springboks. These are the guys we're going to put in the media. This is going to be the guy who's going to answer all the questions and stand for it.'"
On the URC question - 'Will the Stormers win it?' - the panel backed John Dobson's side without writing off the Bulls or the Lions.
"As a South African, where my team is now, I would clearly want one of our teams to win it," Nyakane said. "There's still three teams in the running, which are the Bulls, the Lions, Stormers. So for me right now, I don't [know] - any of them can win it. And can Stormers win it? Yes, definitely, for sure. It's big boy rugby when it comes to that. And at any day, anyone can beat any team. Just being able to put your foot in that door always gives you a chance of winning the trophy."
The panel was clear-eyed, however, about how knockout rugby flips the equation on a side currently sitting top of the URC log.
"Knockout rugby is such a different animal compared to having the momentum in the early of the season," Nyakane said. "You think you're the top dog. You think going into a URC final playing at home for us - it was Munster, that was the one bogey team and we like, it's our opportunity to go back to back, and then you get bumped on the nose quite early in the game, you just lose a bit of confidence and then you can't finish the game out."
The Stormers' sustained ascent under Dobson, the panel argued, has not come from an off-season shopping spree.
"Continuity has probably been a big factor with the Stormers. They haven't gone and put up a big shopping list and really pulled a lot of guys in or really lost a lot of guys. There were a couple of key guys that came back, a couple of key guys that left. But it was the continuity within the squad - within this playing squad and within the management squad - that was consistent. When that consistency starts clicking and the guys start understanding each other, there's more continuity and performance-based results."
The panel reserved its warmest words for Cobus Reinach, the Stormers scrum-half whose late-season injury looks set to keep him out of the business end of the URC.
"I feel bad for him to be honest. Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. It's the most jacked scrum-half I've ever met in my life and the most annoying."
The panel's broader read on the next two seasons of Springbok rugby is that the captaincy succession sits on a smaller pool of names than at any point in recent memory, and that the URC playoff lottery - travel, weather, knockout pressure - will define which South African franchise heads into the 2026 off-season with silverware. Their two answers - Nortje for the armband, Stormers as the most credible URC contenders - will be tested very quickly.
