One of the many things that made the Olympics that finished on Sunday so interesting was the number of top performers who shot their mouths off before events and then fell short.
It was two star athletes, the USA sprint sensation Noah Lyles and Norwegian middle distance athlete Jakob Ingebrigsten who led with the shows of confidence. Although they both won golds in separate events, in Lyles’ case the 100 metre and in Ingebrigsten’s the 5000 metre, they fell short in the two events they were the most mouthy about (the 200m and 1500m respectively).
The experience of those two athletic mega-stars should be a cautionary warning to South Africans who might otherwise start getting ahead of themselves when it comes to the Springbok chances of winning the Castle Lager Rugby Championship for the first time since they won an abbreviated version of the southern hemisphere competition in the 2019 World Cup year.
There are some who give the impression that the Boks have already secured the trophy after what for them was the perfect start, with their full house of bonus points from a comprehensive win over the Wallabies in Brisbane being followed by New Zealand’s shock defeat to Argentina. Perhaps it was because he expected that, and ditto skipper Siya Kolisi, that head coach Rassie Erasmus struck such a cautionary note in the post-match press conference after the Suncorp Stadium triumph.
UNWANTED HABIT
They’ve won two World Cups in the period but if there is an unwanted habit the Boks have picked up in the years playing under Erasmus, it is a tendency to sometimes follow a strong performance and result with the converse.
We can go back to 2018, Erasmus’ first year, for the first evidence of that trend - the Boks had the ability to win the three match series that started the Erasmus reign 3-0 and were dominant enough in the game in Bloemfontein that clinched them an unassailable 2-0 lead to suggest they would, but they lost the so-called dead rubber game in Cape Town.
Later that same season the Boks were en route to following up their seismic win in Wellington by making it two wins out of two against New Zealand in the Championship before they bottled it late in the game at Loftus Versfeld. In 2022 they should have whitewashed the Kiwis too, but a big win in Nelspruit was followed by defeat in Johannesburg. More recently there was the second test in Durban against Ireland that failed to convert the advantage they’d given themselves by winning in Pretoria the previous week.
LOSER INVARIABLY IMPROVES THE FOLLOWING WEEK
It is true that when teams play each other in successive weeks, it is usually the team that wins the first game that improves. It makes sense - it is always the loser that ends up with the most to work on. It is easier for the winner to be complacent, or to just think that worked in game No 1 can suffice for game No 2.
Given the wide chasm between the sides at Suncorp, it would appear fanciful to suggest that the Australians can do what the Kiwis did in South Africa two years ago by turning comprehensive defeat (they lost 26-10 at Mbombela) into a win. The point though is that it won’t be the first time something like that has happened, and another thing the Olympics taught us is that sometimes weird things happen in sport.
However, having said all that, and while guarding against the onset of a wave of South African arrogance that will make us all look silly if it backfires, it is entirely justifiable to say that this year the Rugby Championship is a competition that is the Boks’ to lose. Or to put it another way, if they don’t win it this year they never will.
Let’s start with the Boks themselves. After winning a second successive World Cup, the South Africans have the confidence and BMT to win anywhere. More than that though, the changes made to the coaching staff have added an extra angle that will make it easier for them to win the Championship.
Tony Brown’s arrival as attack coach has added much greater potency to South Africa’s offensive game, and it was just the odd option and poor finishing that prevented from the sublime offload game the Boks at times played from translating into a score of more than 50 points. Pieter-Steph du Toit’s injury enforced switch to lock worked wonders, with flanker Ben-Jason Dixon joining his DHL Stormers teammate Sacha Feinberg-Mgomezulu in making a proper fist of his opportunity to start.
Erasmus may well ring the changes this week, something he hinted at in the buildup to Brisbane when he said more changes could be made if that game went well. It did go well. Whereas in the past making changes came with an element of risk, Erasmus has built up enough depth and experience in the squad to be able to experiment even in away fixtures.
BONUS POINTS WON’T TRIP THEM UP NOW
The key element that has changed though for the Boks when it comes to the winning of the Rugby Championship is that their game-plan is evolving to a point where they can consistently put opposition teams away. In other words, they are better now at converting their dominance into points, which translates into more try scoring bonus points.
Winning by one point is enough to win a World Cup, and when it comes to play-off rugby, there are no bonus points. The Championship is different and it was their lack of try scoring bonus points that cost them in 2022. There have been many other times in the history of Bok challenges in the Championship where they’ve been caught out like that. Perhaps the best example was the final game in 2013 where after an impressive Championship campaign under the captaincy of Jean de Villiers they found themselves having to chase a big score win over the All Blacks.
Chasing tries and a big win against New Zealand was never going to work, it played into the All Black hands, but had they just required a win, it could all have turned out differently. If the Boks win with bonus points, which they should in most matches, they will win the Championship.
And that is something they should be expected to do, for while Erasmus has the luxury of building his depth around a core of double World Cup winners and he also has the continuity that comes with him continuing at the helm into a fourth RWC cycle, that is not the case with New Zealand or Australia. There is rebuilding happening in the playing ranks at both nations, and in both instances there are also new coaches.
A KANGAROO CAUGHT IN THE HEADLIGHTS
The Brisbane game was their first against a team in the top four in the world under the coaching of Joe Schmidt and it is hard to disagree with the view of former All Black legend John Kirwan that they looked like a kangaroo caught in the headlights. Without the regular exposure to the South African physicality and strength at forward they used to get when this country was part of Super Rugby, they found themselves in a place that was alien to them.
They know what to expect now, and did look a bit less rattled in the second half, so Erasmus will be sure to warn his team this week of how much better the Wallabies could be in Perth on Saturday. Schmidt will certainly be facing a massive challenge going forward if the winning margin for the Boks is as big again.
In the New Zealand case there have been experienced players such as scrumhalf Aaron Smith and the two experienced locks, Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock, who have moved on, and for the Argentina game Scott Barrett and others weren’t there either. But even against England the Kiwis weren’t convincing, and could arguably have lost both games.
It does look as if the team and the coach might be struggling to get onto the same page. A massive response will be expected by New Zealand when they play the return against the Pumas at their Eden Park fortress this coming weekend, but even if it is forthcoming, the Boks should start as strong favourites to win both games against them in South Africa.
Yes, the All Blacks often get up against their old foe, as they did in Johannesburg in 2022, but the Boks have grown since then and should be expected to win both games in Johannesburg on 31 August and in Cape Town a week later. If they do that, they could have the Championship trophy already safely wrapped up in their kitbag when they return from Argentina to play the final game in Nelspruit at the end of September.
A repeat of 2009, when the Boks won five of six games in a dominant Tri-Nations campaign, is certainly a strong possibility. And a second win over the Australians in Perth on Saturday will be a significant step towards that.
FIRST ROUND CASTLE LAGER RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS
Australia 7 South Africa 33
New Zealand 30 Argentina 38