Deon Fourie will report to Springbok camp in Johannesburg on Tuesday morning, three days after a performance against the All Blacks that made him impossible to ignore and two days after Siya Kolisi pulled up with a hamstring.
SA Rugby confirmed the call-up on Monday. Fourie is 39 and turns 40 on 25 September. His last appearance in green and gold was the 2023 World Cup final in Paris, when he was forced on at hooker after Bongi Mbonambi's early injury and played 77 minutes of a 12-11 win over New Zealand.
Nearly three years and a run of serious injuries have passed since. Fourie tore knee ligaments against Ulster in May. His comeback game was Friday night's tour opener at Cape Town Stadium, where he started at openside for the Stormers against the All Blacks and lasted 61 minutes before New Zealand pulled clear to win 38-21.
The numbers explain the recall. Fourie scored a try from four carries, won a game-high two turnovers and made 14 of 15 tackle attempts.
Rassie Erasmus needs the cover. Kolisi limped out of Saturday's 17-10 win over Argentina in Buenos Aires in the 24th minute, and the captain was blunt about it afterwards.
"I hurt my hamstring again, unfortunately," Kolisi said. "So, I'll go for a scan and see how far it is."
He was already reckoning with what a second hamstring in a season means. "It is really tough, but I can't be sad about it," he said. "There is nothing I can do now, other than to go and have a scan and then see how long I'm out for."
Erasmus confirmed the detail that matters most. "He injured his hamstring, the other hamstring," the head coach said. Kolisi had already missed the entirety of the Springboks' Nations Championship campaign in July.
RugbyPass also flagged concern over No.8 Cameron Hanekom, who scored the try that broke a 10-10 deadlock in the 62nd minute and then left the field late — though that has not been confirmed by SA Rugby, and at least one reader of the report pushed back on it. Either way, Fourie's value is that he covers both loose forward and hooker, the exact flexibility that got him to Paris in the first place.
The wider squad is reassembling. The 26 players who travelled to South America join the group this week, as do Cheslin Kolbe, Damian Willemse, Jesse Kriel and Ruan Nortje.
Erasmus was not pretending Buenos Aires was a performance.
"We looked leg-weary early on, gave up a lot of territory, and made errors which we knew were likely with seven or eight players having played very little rugby in the last six or seven weeks," he said. "I always expected us to look disjointed, having left 15 players back in South Africa."
He was direct about where the work is. "They play a similarly physical game to us, and we've always struggled to get on top of them physically, but to concede only one try, which came from an offload we probably should have stopped, tells me our defence was largely intact," Erasmus said. "Our discipline was also relatively good, but what we need to sort out is our attack."
The verdict on the win itself was unsentimental. "Argentina play a different style of rugby, and the stadium is genuinely intimidating, but it's a win although it wasn't pretty and perfect," he said. "That said, we are happy with the result and with the way we ground it out."
Kolisi, for his part, thought the margin flattered nobody.
"We have a huge amount of respect for them, and we could easily have lost this game," the captain said. "Home or away, they're one of the toughest teams we play all year. I thought it was going to be a real battle, and we were fortunate to come through it."
Erasmus took something from the closing minutes. "For us to stay calm through that, even without playing our best rugby, tells me we're handling pressure a little better than before," he said.
The first Test of Rugby's Greatest Rivalry is at Ellis Park on Saturday 22 August. If Kolisi's scan is bad, a 39-year-old who was on a hospital table with knee ligament damage in May may find himself in the matchday squad against the All Blacks again.
