South Africa are set to name their side with the major talking point whether Handre Pollard or Pat Lambie will start at fly-half.
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De Villiers missed out on the 2003 World Cup, some six months after he suffered a serious knee injury just five minutes into his debut against France.
Meyer admitted it’s remarkable to have Jean de Villiers available for the tournament.
“If we’re lousy in our first game, I can’t imagine the kind of shape we’ll be in for our second because we only have three days in between”, said Inagaki.
“One thing New Zealand have for them is their continuity”, Meyer told Rugby 365.
“It’s great to see Jean, Francois, Lood, Jannie, Coenie, Fourie and JP back in action, and while we probably could’ve played Duane Vermeulen and Eben Etzebeth, in the end we decided to give them another week to fully recover from their injuries”.
“We’ve been visualising the way South Africa scrum all along and how we can counter that”. Heyneke Meyer must be careful with the guys who play in the northern hemisphere as they have come off a long season with their clubs and will need to be rested and monitored leading into the World Cup.
Speaking ahead of the game, the versatile back spoke about achieving his goal of claiming a place in the South Africa World Cup squad and how criticism gets him fired up for games.
A political party went to court to try and stop the team from going to the World Cup because it had too few blacks, who make up 80 percent of the population.
“Japan definitely pose a threat with the speed of their game and it is up to us to control the pace of the game”.
Starting with De Villiers is unlikely to affect the predicted outcome of Saturday’s encounter, but De Allende’s exclusion will not ease fears of a John Smit-Bismarck du Plessis scenario festering.
“His leadership on and off the field is brilliant but if necessary we have other players that can lead the team, such as Victor. I just hope we get some good weather, so people can enjoy the rugby”.
“The players are there and the Springboks are confident of doing well this year”. Furthermore, once we are comfortable with the above-mentioned areas, it will afford us the freedom to make those crucial decisions later on in the tournament, when it matters the most.
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Veteran scrumhalf Fourie du Preez, who is on the bench, could appear for the Boks for the first time since being substituted early against Scotland in Nelspruit last year.
