Steering wobble at high speed

I have a 99.5 Jetta TDI 5 speed. 230K

I was wondering if I could get some thoughts.

At about 55mph I get a steering wobble, so naturally I jacked the car up and start checking for play.

All ball joints and tie rods are tight, as to be expected, I did a complete suspension/steering job about a year ago. Only thing I didn't replace was wheel bearings and rack and pinion.

There is a little play, about 1/2 inch horizontally in the rack and pinion, my question is this normal or is this my culprit? There are NO leaks in the system.

Also I read somewhere on here if the bearings are bad there will be no play like normal faulty bearings, is this correct?, there is no obvious play vertically like a faulty bearing would show?

Not sure what direction to go here. Both fixes are expensive and I want to make sure I replacing the correct parts.

Appreciate any input,
Josh

Wheel bearings would make a heck of a racket if they were bad enough to cause a steering wobble. "Play" only works on tapered bearings which these are not. At least in my experience I could not detect play in a bearing that was clearly bad from the road test and removal with visual inspection confirmed just how bad it was. I'd start with the basic of alignment or a bent wheel. Then I'd look at the CV shafts for play. Broken boots are a pretty good indicator that a worn CV joint could be within. A worn CV joint is a time bomb waiting to cut loose and hammer everything around it to scrap metal. It's not something you want to "wait and see" with as the damage could be considerable and CV shaft assemblies are not all that expensive or hard to install.

I once had something vaguely similar and altho the tyres were worn to maybe 30% remaining, there were no obvious visual defects but changing the front rubber and the problem went away. Something else to consider