5 Players with Most to Prove Heading into 2015 Rugby Championship

The Rugby Championship adopts an abridged format this year to accommodate the Rugby World Cup.

Rather than its usual home and away format, the tournament will see the four sides play each other just once in a Six Nations-style competition.

That leaves the coaches time to pick and prepare their players for the global showpiece later this year, but also only gives players three matches in which to prove themselves worthy of a place in those trimmed down squads.

A number of key men are assured of their seat on the plane, but for many others, this truncated Rugby Championship must be viewed as a chance to step up their bid for a World Cup berth.

Here are the five with most to prove.

The Highlanders No. 10 Lima Sopoaga has been included in his first All Blacks squad on the back of a stellar season for the new Super Rugby champions.

Sopoaga’s ability to control a game with his boot piloted the Dunedin side through the tournament and he was the more composed of the two squad No. 10s in the Super Rugby final when he proved the better of Beauden Barrett.

Barrett looks to be the man to unseat from the role as understudy to Dan Carter, and his fragility in front of goal in the final two games of the season will not have gone unnoticed by his coaches.

Sopoaga deserves a chance to prove he can make the step up to international rugby, and this tournament is his golden chance to establish himself as a potential successor to the Paris-bound Carter in the post World Cup era.

Matt Giteau has been brought in from the international wilderness after the Australian Rugby Union changed its rules regarding overseas-based players, per the Telegraph.

Since he gave up on his chances of selection under previous coach Robbie Deans, Giteau has been busy amassing a fortune and a massive trophy haul on the fields of France with Toulon.

Playing in either the No. 10 or No. 12 shirt, the former Brumbies hero always elevates the European champions’ back play to the next level.

But he is now back in a Wallaby squad for the first time in four years. He has to prove once again that he is capable of taking a game by the scruff of the neck at this level and controlling it. That looks most likely to be from the No. 12 jersey, with Quade Cooper and Bernard Foley vying for the fly-half role. The Wallabies face South Africa first up, so we will quickly learn about Giteau's defence.

Paul Cully of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote:

In one sense Giteau doesn't need this. He doesn't really need Springboks flankers Marcell Coetzee and Francois Louw trying to eat him up and spit him out. He's got a nice life in France. It's about hunger for him, and whether he now gets his kicks from being an organiser, the man who puts others into gaps, because it is probably too much to ask of those legs to carry quite the same zip as they had in his 20s.

Furthermore, if he finds himself behind a pack going backwards under the pressure sure to come from all three sides Australia will face in the Championship, can the little genius operate to the same effect as he does with the platform provided by Toulon’s expensively assembled unit of monstrous forwards?

Europe knows well what the 2015 version of Matt Giteau is all about.

He must now convince his countrymen.

With injury problems already piled up for South Africa, the return to playing action of captain Jean de Villiers is a welcome boost for coach Heyneke Meyer.

The Stormers man suffered a sickening knee injury in last November’s series Test with Wales and has not been seen on a field since.

The former Munster centre has been named on the bench for the Boks’ exhibition match against a World XV this weekend with a five-to-10-minute appearance expected, per skysports.com.

But at the ripe old age of 34 and a reconstruction of that knee to put to the test, the 106-cap midfielder has it all to do to prove he can regain his best form.

The cauldron of the Rugby Championship will not afford him a gentle re-introduction to the game, but if he is to reassert himself as the leader of this Springbok crop, De Villiers must get up to speed quickly.

If Jean de Villiers is at one end of the experience spectrum, his fellow countryman Jesse Kriel sits at the other, and for different reasons has it all to do in the coming Rugby Championship.

Kriel has been plucked from the Boks’ recent Under 20 World Cup squad to start at outside centre on Saturday against the World XV, per planetrugby.com.

And coach Heyneke Meyer has wasted no time in making his feelings known about the Bulls man who has starred at full-back for the province in the recent Super Rugby campaign.

Meyer said, per planetrugby.com:

‘I reckon Jesse could go on to become one of the greatest outside centres that South Africa has ever produced. I really rate him highly. He can go on to become one of the greats and is probably one of the most talented players I have ever coached.’

Not much to live up to.

Nick Cummins, the Wallaby wing with a mouth at least as fast as his feet, has been thrown a World Cup lifeline by Australia coach Michael Cheika.

Cummins had a below par season for the Western Force after cutting his Japanese sojourn short to try and get back into the green and gold setup for the World Cup.

But it looked as though that plan had failed when he was omitted from Cheika’s original squad. But the withdrawal of Henry Speight on compassionate grounds, per the Canberra Times, has opened the door for the man they call the Honey Badger, who told foxsports.com.au:

‘I always say this — I haven’t heard the fat lady sing yet. The World Cup is a biggie in my own personal book and that’s something I’ve been hustling to get to. It comes right now to crunch time and if it is to be, it’s up to me.’

Cummins must try to recapture the form that elevated him to first-choice wing in his first stint as a regular Wallaby if he is to prove worthy of a seat on the plane to England this year.