Morné van den Berg: ‘Give ‘Krappies’ the jersey for a run of Tests and let him build a partnership with Sacha’

As soon as Morné van den Berg was declared man of the match in Turin, minutes before the final whistle it was confirmed South Africa’s 66-7 win over Italya television camera found him. Then he reached Cobus Reinach in the stands and stayed. You can almost imagine that the director waited all afternoon to tell about the succession.

Two days later, Rassie Erasmus named his team for France. Van den Berg would start. Reinach would be on the bench. It will be Van den Bergh’s seventh Test start, his 13th appearance, and the first time Erasmus has picked him to start two in a row.

For a team that built one of the great sporting dynasties, the position of scrum-half was something of a conundrum. Seven men have started there in 76 Springbok Tests since the 2019 World Cup finals. Reinach has started more than any of them, but even his longest run is just five Tests.

Grant Williams started five in a row immediately before him, a run that ended in defeat at Eden Park in 2025. Reinach took over in Wellington and kept the shirt until Paris that year. Twelve months later, he’s back in Paris, but this time the number 9 jersey belongs to Van den Berg.

Erasmus made the same call in Baltimore, with the series against All black people win. Reinach started both wins which put the Boks 2-1 up in rugby’s biggest rivalry. Van den Berg started the decider, producing a virtuoso display that earned him man of the match in a 43-28 win. He scored a try and won a penalty on the ball after Cam Roigard broke through the middle of the field. But the sequence that best explained why Erasmus chose him began with the scrum.

South Africa just went up 22-14 and New Zealand crashed after restarting. Van den Berg took the short side and found Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu already picking up speed. André Esterhuizen came on in the 22, Pieter-Steph du Toit buried and Van den Berg, who replaced the volatile fly-half, converted himself.

He had seen a similar gap on his first senior outing for the Lions. In a preseason game against Bulls at the FNB Stadium in January 2020, the 22-year-old came off the bench, wriggled out of the hands of Cornal Hendricks and slotted past Mania Libbok down the blindside for a 25-metre effort. Moments later, he lofted a pass from a defensive scramble past his backline to give the Bulls a try.

“That’s ‘Krappies’ for you,” his University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) coach, Hugo van As, told The Citizen newspaper. Krapi means ‘little crab’ in Afrikaans. It’s perfect for a scrum-half who likes to pinch the ball and slip through gaps that seem too small for him.

Van den Berg played center at Hoërskool Linden in Johannesburg, where Springboks Thinus Delport and Jean Kleyn also learned their trade. It represented Zlatni Lions at the Grant Khomo under-16 week and came through their academy but got a running side at Wits.

Van As used him at full-back as well as fly-half, and by 2019 Van den Berg was one of Wits’ standouts in the Varsity Cup, South Africa’s biggest inter-university rugby competition. He earned a call-up to the Lions’ Currie Cup squad that year and kept turning out for Wits at club level. He scored four tries in the prestigious Pirates Grand Challenge semi-final, then helped Wits lift the trophy for the first time in 52 years.

He expected to play in the Varsity Cup again next year. Instead, a week after the Bulls warm-up, he made his Super Rugby debut from the bench in a 38-8 defeat of Jaguars in Buenos Aires. He started alongside Elton Jantjies against Red next week. By the time Erasmus invited him to the alignment camp in March 2024, he had played more than 60 times for the Lions. He made his Test debut against him Portugal that July, at 26. His first start was against Australia in Perth, but played only those two Tests that year.

There was a time when you could name the Springboks scrum-half before seeing the team sheet. Joost van der Westhuizen and Fourie du Preez have made the jersey their own.

In 2025, there were four more, with five attempts. He scored two goals against Italy at Loftus before Faf de Klerk replaced him in the 54th minute. Afterwards, De Klerk said Van den Berg “wants to learn as much as he can”. Then, two months after reaching 100 Lions appearances this March, Van den Berg needed surgery on a biceps injury. His coach Ivan van Rooyen estimated he’d be out for four to six months. By August, he was back in the Bok jersey.

Erasmus also recalled what Van den Berg brought to the camp “even if he doesn’t play or just helps with analysis.” He came off the bench against the All Blacks in Cape Town and Soweto. In the second of those games, he dunked under little pressure, picked up a high ball that Ethan Hooker almost recovered and raced back towards his own line in the 80th minute to bring down Josh Moorby. The following week, with the series on the line, Erasmus gave him the start.

There have been times when you could name the Springboks scrum-half before you’d seen the team sheet. Joost van der Westhuizen and Fourie du Preez made the jersey theirs. Faf de Klerk played the whole of the 2023 World Cup final with no specialist nine on the bench. The Boks have spent much of the time since that night in Paris finding out what different scrum-halves can give them. This week, in Paris, Erasmus will learn more about the same.

Wales on the Boks side they won 73-0. In Turin, his pack gave him a 45-0 half-time lead. Before Soweto, when asked about Roigard, Van den Berg said: “As a scrum-half, it’s really difficult if your pack is going back.” France

The more they play together, the better Feinberg-Mngomezulu will know when to look for the ball and when to shoulder Van den Berg.

If Erasmus were asking me, I’d give him the jersey for a run of Tests and let him build a partnership with Feinberg-Mngomezulu. There was a glimpse of what it might look like in Baltimore. Van den Berg took the short side and found Feinberg-Mngomezulu on the move, with room to accelerate. On a slower ball, Van den Berg can shoot from the baseline or send a forward back to the other side and force the defense to fold around the second arm. The more they play together, the better Feinberg-Mngomezulu will know when to look for the ball and when to shoulder Van den Berg.

Reinach will be 37 when the World Cup starts next year. I’d still want him on the bench if the Boks are four points clear with 20 minutes to go in a knockout game. If opposing forwards are tiring and there’s room around the ruck, I’d want Williams. Erasmus can make that call from week to week. But I think he found a man to begin with. I would like to see what the ‘Krappies’ and boy wonder Sacha can do with five tests together.