Nick Mallett's concern isn't with who Erasmus picked — it's with what happens if the squad's hooker cover is tested. With only Marx and Wessels listed as specialists, and Van Staden as the hybrid fallback, Mallett finds it genuinely strange that Erasmus has applied the same depth logic to hooker that he applies to a position like scrum-half — where three specialists made the cut. His core argument: hooker isn't a position you can paper over. The scrumming penalties, the driving maul, the lineout throwing — all degrade sharply the moment a non-specialist is doing the job, as the Stormers illustrated vividly just last weekend. Mallett isn't writing off Van Staden, but he's sceptical the coaching staff would actually lean on that option if things went wrong, predicting Mbonambi would get the call instead.
The piece also frames Wessels's selection positively — Mallett backs the decision to use him purely as a hooker now that loosehead depth is genuinely strong, and believes he has the ceiling to rival Marx. But that upside is precisely why the tour feels like a gamble: two specialists, both of whom are important long-term assets, with a thin safety net behind them. The 2023 World Cup precedent — where the Boks rolled with Fourie rather than calling up a specialist when Marx went down — looms over all of it, and Mallett clearly doesn't want that to become a template.