South Africa's participation in the revamped Rugby Championship is not guaranteed.
World Cup-winning coach and now South Africa's director of rugby Rassie Erasmus believes Springbok players will need between 400-500 minutes of rugby at least to be ready to defend their tournament title in Australia.
South African teams played their first rugby in six months at the weekend, and their top players will feature in a trial match at the weekend with a combined Super Rugby/Currie Cup competition beginning on October 10.
That doesn't leave a lot of time to achieve the time target Erasmus has set.
Overseas players are closest to achieving the time requirement, but those players based in South Africa are running out of time.
Erasmus, who is in self-isolation due to a rare condition that makes him vulnerable to Covid infection, said there was no clarity on when England-based players will be available ahead of the Premiership semifinals on October 10-11 or the final on October 24.
"We desperately want to go play. We want to play Springbok rugby, and it would be terrible to go through a year without playing Test matches," he told South African media on Monday.
"It's more the English clubs that will be involved in their semifinals and final. We haven't got a clear answer about when their players would be available. The French clubs, I think, are aligned with us."
Having all players arrive at the same time was important, he said. It would also be a massive squad to ensure in the case of injuries that there was enough cover at hand rather than having to go through quarantine.
"You'll have to take four looseheads [props], four tightheads, four hookers…because if you get an injury in those key positions, then the player who comes in must go to quarantine for two weeks.
"It's not that we can't overcome it. But if the overseas-based players only arrive two weeks after us because of their finals they have to play in the Premiership, then in the first two weeks when we start playing against Argentina, they will still be in quarantine," he said.
Every effort was being made by South African administrators and Sanzaar to achieve a resolution to the issues.
"We have to get five to six games into the players before it is safe for them in terms of injury risk and player welfare.
"We're busy investigating how we can best manage those things in terms of how we can make the Rugby Championship happen.
"The players need between 400-500 minutes to be competitive and safe to play a high-performance tournament, and those players are probably the overseas-based players. But, even with them, the player with the highest minutes there is on just over 400 minutes. There are still two weeks to go.
"We don't have an answer. We know we want to go and we know we have to go. We don't know at this stage how we're going to make it possible to go," Erasmus said.
And the Springbok head coach Jacques Nienaber added the side had still not received a green light from the South African government to leave and they hadn't heard from Australia about what they would be able to do during their quarantine.
"They're still working on that with their government to give us guidelines in terms of what we can do when we get there," he said.