Rassie Erasmus has spoken about the attainment of momentum as the prize for a series win against Ireland and a glance at the current World Rugby rankings underlines what might be at stake for the Springboks in Saturday’s second test at Hollywoodbets Kings Park.
Not everyone takes the rankings that seriously, but there is status that comes with being the No 1 ranked rugby team in the world, and for the Boks staying No 1 will underline their status as reigning world champions.
Before last week’s first test in Pretoria, there was talk of the Boks being displaced as the No 1 team. That could have happened in the unlikely event of Ireland, who had closed the gap on the South Africans by winning the Guinness Six Nations during the southern hemisphere international off-season, winning the first match of the rubber by 15 points.
Now there is no chance of that. The Boks currently sit on 94.86 points, nearly 4.5 ahead of the second ranked Irish, who are on 90.37, with the All Blacks (90.12) closing in on second spot after last week’s narrow win over England. But they too are distant, and while it is hard to do a proper analysis around the gaps between the teams at specific points of history, partially because the workings of the rankings are hard to understand, the Boks’ lead at the top does appear to be as unprecedented as it is impregnable in the short term .
GAP AT TOP IS UNPRECEDENTED FOR BOKS
Not even in 2009, when the team coached by Peter de Villiers and captained by John Smit won a Lions series and beat the All Blacks 3-0 on the way to winning the Tri-Nations, were the Boks so far ahead. What is different 15 years later is that New Zealand have slipped from their previous consistency. The All Blacks were still beating every other team at that time so they were close enough to the Boks at the end of that southern hemisphere season to overtake them when the Boks lost two games on that year’s end of year tour.
Why this is all significant is that a series clinching win on Saturday, given the way points are weighted and the Boks playing the No 2 ranked team, will widen the gap even further and make Siya Kolisi’s men nigh uncatchable this year.
The Boks telegraphed enormous growth potential when they beat the next best team last week while in the process of introducing some marked changes to their game template. Being cemented into the top position could just make it easier for Bok coach Erasmus to experiment both with selections and the game plan.
At least that was what was surely implied when he spoke about the establishment of the platform that would be created through winning this series. Erasmus intends fielding an experimental team against Portugal in the last game of the incoming tours month in Bloemfontein next week, but he said that it would depend on the result of the Kings Park game and the mood at the conclusion of the series.
It is less easy to try things when you are coming off a loss. Defeat won’t be a complete train smash in the sense that the series would be drawn, not lost, but a win will see the Boks in a position where they can develop and refresh while in a dominant position.
Of course, they will need to win the Castle Lager Rugby Championship to maintain that position, but winning the Ireland series will give them some leeway when they start off that competition with two games in Australia in August.
TOO MUCH BEING MADE OF IRELAND INJURIES
Although the Boks were deserved winners and could have won far more comprehensively had they taken all their scoring opportunities in the first half, the Ireland rally in the second half at Loftus has set up the Durban clash perfectly.
Ireland have had their injury problems this week while the Boks have been able to retain the highly decorated, most experienced Bok team in history that did duty in Pretoria. But a look at the Ireland team shows that the absences don’t exactly decimate them - they are still a team rich in both experience and talent. The key replacements are hooker Ronan Kelleher, scrumhalf Conor Murray and centre Garry Ringrose (in for the injured Bundee Aki), none of them exactly new kids on the block and they’ve all played big games for Ireland in the past.
You’d almost assume that the bench could be where the difference comes this week, with the Boks’ so-called bomb squad making a massive impact on the scrumming battle late in the game at Loftus and Ireland’s strength in depth sapped by the injuries. But with last week’s captain Peter O’Mahony one of the players on the bench, and several other experienced players also there, it isn’t necessarily an assumption that holds up.
Instead we should look at which team is most likely to improve on last week, and in this instance that does look to be the Boks, with the first choice team effectively playing their first game together since the World Cup at Loftus. Ireland had played five games in the Six Nations since they were knocked out of the RWC last October so have played together a lot more.
Handre Pollard surely won’t kick as poorly from the tee this week as he did last time out, and he will also have 80 minutes under his belt of trying the more direct style attack coach Tony Brown wants him to return to so his all-round play should be more authoritative too.
The Bok scrum hopes to have ironed out the technical areas, perhaps read that as refereeing interpretations, that saw them underpowered in the first part of the Loftus game.
They should also be forearmed as much as forewarned against the Irish ploy of disrupting them at the breakdown and should have figured out a way to protect scrumhalf Faf de Klerk from the Irish intentions. With the Bok maul having been completely blunted at Loftus, there would have been hard work this week on getting that aspect right too.
The Irish will be looking to improve the lineout that was so poor poor in Pretoria and will be more prepared for the Bok running game than maybe they were early on last weekend. They will also be hoping that the inroads they made into the Bok defensive system late in the Loftus game was a sign of things to come, that a key has been turned.
STRATEGISING IN THIS SERIES IS LIKE CHESS
That is assuming the teams go in with the same templates and intent as they did seven days ago, which in a series where you play in consecutive weeks is often not the case.
Indeed, it is going to be an intriguing battle between two smart and decorated coaching groups - the Boks are World Cup winners and Ireland European champions, with their coach the reigning WR Coach of the Year. Someone said this week that the strategising permutations made this series like chess, and more is the pity then that this series won’t have a third game.
Will the Boks persist with the expansive strategy from last week? Almost certainly, but it is fair to expect them to play a bit tighter this time too. Ireland will be emboldened by how the last game finished, and it is true that the Boks found it difficult to break Ireland down once they’d settled in the second half.
But the Boks weren’t as efficient as they needed to be seven days ago and they should be better this week. If they are, they could do what they threatened to do last week by winning by more than a score.
Teams
South Africa: Willie le Roux, Cheslin Kolbe, Jesse Kriel, Damian de Allende, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Handre Pollard, Faf de Klerk, Kwagga Smith, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Siya Kolisi (captain), Franco Mostert, Eben Etzebeth, Frans Malherbe, Bongi Mbonambi, Ox Nche. Replacements: Malcolm Marx, Gerhard Steenekamp, Vincent Koch, Salmaan Moerat, RG Snyman, Marco van Staden, Grant Williams, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu.
Ireland: Jamie Osborne, Calvin Nash, Garry Ringrose, Robbie Henshaw, James Lowe, Jack Crowley, Conor Murray, Caelan Doris, Josh van der Flier, Tadhg Beirne, James Ryan, Joe McCarthy, Tadhg Furlong, Ronan Kelleher, Andrew Porter. Replacements: Rob Herring, Cian Healy, Finlay Bealham, Ryan Baird, Peter O’Mahony, Caolin Blade, Ciaran Frawley, Stuart McCloskey.
Referee: Karl Dickson (RFU)
Kick-off: 5pm
Prediction: Boks to win by 10