BOKS IN REVIEW: This was the year world champs became serial winners

You might argue that with two successive Rugby World Cup titles behind them, the Springboks could already consider themselves serial winners as they headed into their 2025 campaign, but that wasn’t really the reality.

Although this country has won four RWC titles, more than anyone else, with New Zealand next best on three, for most of the past 30 years, they have struggled to reign over the rest of the world in the in-between years. There has been a perception of massive focus from South Africans on the global showpiece event that takes place every four years, but too many blips and swings in the other years.

For instance, if you look at the Castle Lager Rugby Championship and the Tri-Nations that preceded that during the years of professionalism, which started in 1996, it has been New Zealand who have been the dominant team. The Boks did win the southern hemisphere international competition sporadically, and in some years, such as 2009, their dominance was massive. But they’d never backed up, meaning they won it in successive years.

2025 SAW SA CHANGE THE TREND

Until now. They went in as champions this year, and after the shock that was delivered by Australia in the opening game, which should rank as the international match of the year for neutrals, as that Ellis Park clash had everything, they went on to retain the trophy. And although history will reflect that they ended with the same log points as the All Blacks, they did it in style.

Just a month on from the ignominious defeat to a Wallaby team that profited from the Boks’ over-ambition by coming back to score 38 unanswered points in turning around what had been a 22-7 deficit, and a week on from failing to cross the frontier that was the All Black fortress of Eden Park, the Boks made their statement.

When coach Rassie Erasmus made his selection for the return game against New Zealand in Wellington, many thought he’d taken leave of his senses. But not those who recognised the energy and X-factor value of a team that had Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Damian Willemse lining up alongside each other in the key 10/12 decision-making axis and the gifted Canan Moodie outside them.

South Africa’s most capped player, Eben Etzebeth, was omitted, and many Kiwis would have seen that as an indication that Erasmus was looking to the future and wasn’t that concerned about turning the Bok results around in the here and now. But think again. RG Snyman is a world-class lock, and what that game did was confirm that no one in the Bok setup is indispensable.

Well, okay, maybe Malcolm Marx is, but let’s get onto that later. The game was close at halftime, in fact the All Blacks were leading, but in reality, it was hard to understand how. The Boks were the dominant force but somehow just weren’t clinical enoug,h whereas the All Blacks were. But what former Bok great Schalk Burger predicted in his role as a Supersport studio analyst at halftime came to pass in the second half - meaning the dam wall broke. And how!

The Boks ended up winning 43-10, which was the biggest-ever defeat suffered by New Zealand, eclipsing the previous record also inflicted by this era of Boks - the 35-7 defeat they suffered at Twickenham in the buildup to the 2023 World Cup in France.

FIRST QUARTER IN JOBURG SHOWED CAPABILITIES

That was undeniably the turnaround moment, although that expression too requires qualification. The Boks weren’t that flash in the July internationals against Italy and Georgia, but in the first 20 minutes of that big reverse to Australia in Johannesburg in August, they did send out a warning to the rest of the world of what they could be capable of.

Wallaby coach Joe Schmidt, at the end of the mini-series against the Boks, referred to the first 20 minutes of the game at Ellis Park as “the best window of rugby I have ever seen from the Springboks”. And he may have been right. If he was warning the rest of the world about what was to come, he was on the money, too.

Calling the impact of attack coach Tony Brown on the Boks ‘Tonyball’ has suddenly become more odious than it ever was now that the England cricketers have plunged to an Ashes series defeat in a record 11 days, for it was England’s now much maligned ‘Bazball’, named after their Kiwi coach Brendon McCullum, that gave rise to that expression.

But while there may have been a comparison that day, which ironically also came against an Australian team, for the Boks by their own admission just overdid their attacking intent in Johannesburg, there isn’t really. Brown never came in to reinvent the wheel. He came in to supplement and bring a new dynamic to the platform that had already won the Boks two successive World Cup titles.

SACHA HAS RAISED THE BOK CEILING CONSIDERABLY

And that’s where the Boks headed after the wake-up call of that 38-22 Wallaby win that shook the rugby world to its foundations. They were nervy in winning the next week, were sloppy in losing a game they should have won in Auckland, but they got the mix between broadsword and rapier together with thrilling effect in that second half in Wellington.

At the heart of it initially was Feinberg-Mngomezulu, but Manie Libbok, with his outstanding distribution skills and a much-improved kicking game, both from the tee and in general play, played his part too. Just in case anyone thinks Sacha is completely indispensable, let’s remember those moments, such as the second half in Wellington, where it was proven that isn’t quite the case.

And yet there is no denying the impact that the wondrously talented Feinberg-Mngomezulu has had on the Boks and the heights they can soar to as a team when he is present, and that was writ large in the next game. Again, the Boks started sluggishly against Argentina in Durban, something which was a bit of a habit for much of 2025, and the game looked in the balance as halftime neared.

That was the cue, thoug,h for Feinberg-Mngomezulu to take the game in the palm of his hands like no other South African flyhalf ever has, scoring a hat-trick of tries and racking up a record number of points, 37, in a 67-30 win over the Pumas. Even the Boks’ most acerbic and bitter critics acknowledged Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s brilliance that day, and it drew favourable comparisons with the former All Black great, Dan Carter.

With Feinberg-Mngomezulu in the game-driving saddle, there is no limit to the extent to which the Boks can still grow, and that is ominous for the rest of the world. The Boks went on to win the deciding game against the Pumas in London a week later with a scoreline that was a kind of microcosm of their Championship campaign - in the sense that although the record books will reflect a two-point win, in reality their dominance of that game, particularly the second half, was worthy of a margin closer to 20 points.

STATS REFLECT THEY WERE BEST BY A BIG MARGIN

They ended on the same points as New Zealand, and yet the stats, in just about every aspect of the game that is relevant, showed the Boks to be markedly superior to every other team. And it continued on the end of year tour too, with the French pretensions to being the unlucky team, and the real No 1, after their one-point defeat to the Boks in the 2023 World Cup quarterfinal in Paris, being unceremoniously quashed in the supposed revenge game at the same venue.

And so on to Italy, who were well beaten with 14 men, which was also the case for the French by the way, and then Ireland in Dublin, a venue where the Boks hadn’t won for a long time but where the result was never in doubt after the South Africans had crushed the Irish in the early scrums. There were 11 points in it at the end, but it would have been more if the Boks were not so intent on making a physical point in the scrums.

MARX WAS THE BOK MAN OF THE YEAR

The year closed out with a whitewashing of Wales marred only by the late eye-gouging incident that later saw Etzebeth cop a three-month suspension, but which once again saw Marx, who played more rugby than any other Bok in the 2025 international season, very much to the fore.

He was deservedly the recipient of the World Rugby Player of the Year award, something he was made aware of in the change-room afterwards, and the way his teammates mobbed him and celebrated with him showed their massive respect for him. Let it be said that while several other Boks would have been his nearest challengers, and twice winner of the award, Pieter-Steph du Toit, is also still a globally regarded freak of a player, it really was no race.

It was a pity that Jan-Hendrik Wessels, who, although he swings between loosehead prop and hooker, looks the probable like-for-like replacement for Marx going forward, missed the November tour due to suspension. For that was the time for him to build on what he’d started during the southern hemisphere season in terms of showing that there is life after Marx.

He wasn’t there, though, so that’s a question still to be answered and a debate still to be had, but coach Erasmus will no doubt come up with something, as he has in every instance over the past year or so.

TAKE CENTRE STAGE, MR FLENTER

Perhaps the biggest and most spoken innovation is the introduction of the world’s most spoken about hybrid player, Andre Esterhuizen, to his new role of being a “flenter”, meaning a synthesis of flank and centre.

He first played that role in the opening game of 2025 against the Barbarians in Cape Town, but it was when the Boks went down to 14 men in Paris and in Turin later in the year that his value was best underlined. Esterhuizen was back in his primary role of inside centre in the last game of the year, and he turned in a monstrous performance that showed that perhaps moonlighting as a flank has added to his already innate ability to carry the ball across the gainline with telling effect.

JUNIOR BOKS SHOWED SUCCESS CAN BE SUSTAINED

And so ended a year where the Boks were becoming incrementally more and more dominant, and the message that so many have put out is that South Africans must enjoy this time as it won’t last forever. While it is true that no sporting team can be dominant forever, there was another event away from the Boks themselves in 2025 that suggested that the current trend of serial success can be sustained a long time into the future.

After a poor performance in the Under-20 Rugby Championship, the Junior Boks won the Junior World Cup at a canter, and there were several players in that group that look star quality for the future and who will, in time, add to the youngsters who are already making Erasmus’ succession planning so much easier.

That, and a much better performance in the most recent Women’s World Cup, with Swys de Bruin guiding the Bok ladies to the final, plus some recovery from the Blitzboks on the Sevens circuit, is reflective of a much sought-after improvement in the systems that serve the top. Dave Wessels, erstwhile coach of Australian state teams, deserves a lot of credit for that.