A mix-up led to the fly-half wearing a different shirt against Japan

Handré Pollard wore the wrong jersey in Rugby World Cup quarter-final

Some eagle-eyed Springboks fans noticed that fly-half Handré Pollard was wearing a slightly different shirt to his team-mates, as they lined up to face Japan in their Rugby World Cup quarter-final.

As you can see from the image above, with Pollard kicking while replacement prop Vincent Koch looks on, the shirts are slightly different. While Koch’s is the official World Cup shirt, with the competition logo on the right side of his chest, Pollard’s features the Springbok emblem.

On Monday a representative from the Boks stated: “A mix-up in supply led to the delivery of a small number of incorrectly branded jerseys by which point it was too late to source replacements.”

There were plenty of people who clocked the difference throughout the 80 minutes of rugby…

Related: Japan 3-26 South Africa

Second-row Lood de Jager was also in the wrong shirt during the match, one without the official World Cup logo or the graphic of the Webb Ellis trophy on the right sleeve. However, more people pointed out Pollard’s shirt switch.

Not that it made any major difference in the game, with a calm and brutal South Africa side doing the business against the competition hosts in Tokyo. The fly-half kicked 11 points in a measured performance based on forwards’ dominance.

In fact, Pollard is now on 126 World Cup points in his career, taking him into the all-time top ten in the competition. He was already South Africa’s all-time leading points scorer in the competition, with four more points than Percy Montgomery before this on kicked off.

South Africa play Wales in the World Cup semi-final in Yokohama on Sunday (6pm JST/9am BST).

Keep track of events in Japan via our Rugby World Cup homepage.

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