CHAMPIONSHIP WRAP: SA can sustain success throughout cycle

By winning the Castle Lager Rugby Championship in the season following a World Cup win, Siya Kolisi’s team went through a new frontier for Springbok rugby.

While the Boks have won an unprecedented four World Cups starting with the historic first triumph in 1995, being champions in the in-between years has not been their forte. In fact, it has been beyond them. They did win Tri-Nations titles in 1998, three years after the first win, and again two years after the next success, 2009, but they’ve never followed up in the year following the annexation of the Webb Ellis trophy.

Part of that has been the transition that has often followed the year of a World Cup. Kitch Christie’s health ended his unbeaten Bok stint as coach, with Andre Markgraaff taking over in 1996. The Boks came last in the Tri-Nations and also lost a home series to the All Blacks.

In 2008 Peter de Villiers replaced the second Bok World Cup-winning coach, Jake White. He did achieve success in 2009, with both a dominant Tri-Nations win and a British and Irish Lions series win. But in De Viliers’ first year in charge, the Boks went from world champions to last in the Tri-Nations.

In 2020, the year following the win in Japan, Covid arrived and the Boks did not play any international rugby that year. Which brings us to today. The powerful performance that buried Argentina at the Mbombela Stadium rounded off South Africa’s first ever triumphant post-World Cup year by clinching the Championship trophy in its current guise for only the second time.

LED FROM START TO FINISH

Although there was the unexpected hiccup in the penultimate game against Argentina, the Boks were as dominant in the Championship as they were in the Nelspruit game. The All Blacks did finish strongly with a good win in Bledisloe 2, and were able to creep past the Pumas to claim second.

But they were eight points behind the Boks in the end, meaning two wins, with Argentina 10 behind. Australia finished with just one fortunate, last-gasp win in a wet weather game against Argentina, with the finishing order pretty much going according to how the world rankings and form suggested they would.

The Boks led from the start of the competition to the end, thus replicating the achievement of John Smit’s team in 2009, with Smit’s side also ironically suffering just one unexpected blemish in the penultimate game, in their case against Australia, in an otherwise dominant five wins in six starts performance.

Of course, the Boks have a settled team that has just come off a second World Cup success, while the All Blacks are clearly rebuilding. In that sense, the All Blacks will feel encouraged with improvements made to their attacking game and will expect to be more settled under the coaching of Scott Robertson when the next Championship comes around a year from now.

KIWIS WILL IMPROVE YET SO WILL BOKS

But while New Zealand should be better, and will be playing their two games against the Boks at home next year, there’s good reason to believe the Boks will be a lot better too. For the perception that they are a settled team deserves some interrogation. It is true they have a phalanx of double World Cup winners, but it is also true that Bok coach Rassie Erasmus has mixed up his selections on a weekly basis.

The second game against the All Blacks in Cape Town and the final game in Nelspruit were arguably the only occasions in the Championship that the Boks were at full strength. Erasmus readily admitted at the post-match press conference at the Mbombela Stadium that his selection policy may have contributed to some erraticism due to lack of continuity, with the Santiago game seven days earlier obviously his main reference point.

Yet few would argue with his contention that his policy is also necessary. The Boks will have a very aged squad representing them in 2027 when they go in quest of a World Cup hattrick in Australia if they just stick to the double RWC winners. And an extra angle to the triumph that was confirmed this past weekend has been how successful some of the newcomers have been.

Much of course has been written about the status and potential of Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, who wasn’t always a first-choice player at the DHL Stormers before he made his debut off the bench in the first game of the international season against Wales in London. His opening statement was a calmly taken long-range penalty, and he never looked back.

His franchise teammate Ben-Jason Dixon may still have some growing to do at international level but he did play more games than most would have anticipated in his first international season. Grant Williams had of course played for the Boks before but before his injury, this was his arrival as an international flyhalf.

And Aphelele Fassi, the man nicknamed The Weekend Special, made the graduation during this past campaign from being a precociously talented yet raw player to being a mature international player. In fact, his progress, starting with his solid performance against Wales, was nothing short of remarkable, and while the injured Damian Willemse might have been considered a sure selection back into the No 15 jersey when he recovers, now we can’t be so sure.

TRIO OF BULLS MADE BIG STATEMENT

Yet it was arguably a trio of Vodacom Bulls players that would have most pleased the Bok coaches. The potential of the aforementioned players was already known, but Elrigh Louw’s rise as a strong ball carrying loose-forward might have been less expected. By the end of the Championship season he was becoming a permanent fixture in the match 23 which, given the abundance of talent available in his position, says a lot.

Lock Ruan Nortje, the Bulls captain, also appeared to grow exponentially as a player with each game he played and by the end of the competition the likes of Lood de Jager, Franco Mostert and RG Snyman were not nearly as noticeable through their absence as we might have thought they would be.

And then there’s hard-working Gerhard Steenekamp, the loosehead who is making double World Cup winner Steven Kitshoff’s now rather unfortunate continued injury-enforced absence less noticeable. In short, the refreshment process has started, and is being implemented in a team that still has a nucleus of World Cup winners they can learn off. And the Boks are winning.

BROWN’S DYNAMIC WILL SEE THEM SOAR

They should continue to do so too for the players coming into the Bok system are not the only strong building blocks that are being put in place for the sustained success that will ensure the Boks’ current hegemony in the southern hemisphere is not as short lived as it was in 1998 and 2009 (there was also 2004 but that Tri-Nations success was achieved on bonus points and was not a dominant performance).

Another strong building block is probably the most significant one - the new dynamic that is being introduced by New Zealander Tony Brown’s inclusion in the coaching group as the man in charge of the attack.

As Erasmus acknowledged after Mbombela, the process of up-skilling the Boks and adding a new dimension to the South African attacking game was started by Felix Jones towards the end of the previous World Cup cycle. However, Brown’s presence is threatening to take the Boks to a whole new level.

There were understandable fears at the start of this international season that it might mean the Boks would eschew their traditional forward strengths. There were times, such as when they took the lead in the first test against Ireland and for the first hour of the Johannesburg game against the All Blacks, that it felt like the Boks could be tighter and work harder at wearing their opponents down with more direct forward play.

However, while the growing pains have been undeniable through their presence, the first 20 minutes in Santiago and the entire 80 minutes in Nelspruit provided us with a timely example of where the Boks are heading - and it should have been taken as a loud warning by the rest of the world.

The almost perfect rugby the Boks played in the opening part of the game in Argentina was not sustained, perhaps because they were too helter-skelter for the hot conditions and it caught up with them, or maybe because they so successfully put it together that it seduced them into expecting an easy victory and the Pumas to lie down and die.

But at Mbombela Stadium there was a strong blend of flash and forward power, with the game being mixed up impressively. Neglecting traditional forward strengths? Pah, that just isn’t true, it’s just that now the Boks have more angles and options. There is plenty of talent in this country, not just in the forwards, and in the three flyhalves they are working with, in centres like Damian de Allende, Lukhanyo Am, Jesse Kriel and the under-utilised Andre Esterhuizen, who has been sublime for the Sharks, plus the wings and the fullbacks, the Boks have a plethora of backs who can hurt opponents.

URC PARTICIPATION ANOTHER BIG PLUS

Then there’s the role being played by the participation in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship and Investec Champions Cup which is improving depth like never before. Erasmus apologised for not using Nicolaas Janse van Rensburg, who he called into the squad in mid-season, but in not doing so he effectively ensured that all the new players that were successfully blooded were home-based.

Erasmus is right when he says, as he did a few years back, that the URC is a better replica of the type of rugby you can expect at test level than Super Rugby is, and perhaps the decline in the performances of the All Blacks and Australians is a measure of that.

With all these building blocks combined together to ensure a blend of game growth and impressive succession planning, there is no reason why the Boks shouldn’t do something they’ve never done in the World Cup era - namely sustain their success throughout a four-year World Cup cycle.

Weekend Castle Lager Rugby Championship results

New Zealand 33 Australia 13

South Africa 48 Argentina 7