Coach Rassie Erasmus has hinted there will be more changes as his team heads to Cape Town for the potential Castle Lager Rugby Championship clincher, but Springbok fans should be feeling a lot less nervous about his selection policy after Saturday’s win over the All Blacks.
It was a gamble to play relative newcomers in key positions in such a big game but Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Aphelele Fassi and others came through with such flying colours that the Emirates Airlines Park thriller should be seen as a seminal moment in this World Cup cycle.
The growth that comes out of beating the Kiwis is inestimable. It should be seen as a breakthrough moment for Feinberg-Mngomezulu, a breakthrough moment for Fassi, and a breakthrough moment for the entire squad.
And the way the Boks had to dig deep, hang tough before prevailing will only make the whole experience a more valuable juncture on the road not only to making the Boks a dominant force in the years before the World Cup but also favourites to make it a three-peat in Australia in 2027.
You know times have changed for the Boks when after a victory over the All Blacks there are South African fans who act surprised about how close it was and lament aspects of the performance.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Boks were recovering from two successive defeats where the Kiwis ran up more than 50 points. Well, it was a different era, but Albany 2017 was just seven years ago, and several of the players who drove the Bok surge in the final minutes at Emirates Airlines Park were involved back then.
They’ve won six times to five with one draw against their great rivals since that final year of Allister Coetzee’s ill-fated stint as coach and have won three of those games in succession, with a record beckoning as they head now to Cape Town in their quest to wrap up what would be this country’s second Championship title.
Throw in two successive World Cup wins and there has been an undeniable switch in the balance of power between the two traditional powerhouses of the global game, although the Emirates Airlines Park game was part of a continuing trend of their clashes being decided by fine margins.
ALL BLACKS WERE AT THEIR BEST
And it is true that this will be a game that should be a particular big blow to the New Zealanders because for a long time they were the more efficient and clinical of the two teams, if not the most forceful. Some of their attacking play ranked as just sublime and spectacular, and this was easily their best performance since their win over Ireland in the World Cup quarterfinal.
Which all of course adds to the significance of a Bok win where they didn’t get everything right.
There were a few occasions the All Blacks looked on the cusp of drawing away to a comprehensive win. The Boks made mistakes, and the intercept try scored by Jordie Barrett straight after halftime that took the visitors more than a score clear of their opponents would have been a killer blow to many other teams.
But not to these Boks, they’ve developed a habit of clinching victories in the manner they did in this game, and were poised to do something similar against Ireland in Durban six weeks ago before a late twist that denied them.
That Hollywoodbets Kings Park defeat was a valuable lesson, and the Emirates Airline Park win was equally important from a learning viewpoint, albeit for a different reason. It is the fact that the young players were part of a game that followed that script, of having to fight back, that makes it such a big moment rather than the victory itself.
EXPERIENCED PLAYERS ARE KEY TO THE PLAN
That is not to say that the experienced players don’t have a role to play. Indeed, they are key to the Erasmus plan. Without them, and with success, the chance to grow so steeply in an upward trajectory while freshening up wouldn’t be there.
The experienced players were huge in Johannesburg. Ruan Nortje, playing just his third test, is probably the fifth ranked No 5 lock if you consider that Pieter-Steph du Toit can also be used in that position, but in the Johannesburg game he played like he belongs on the highest rung of international rugby.
He, and the Boks as a whole, were less assured though before Eben Etzebeth came on as his second row partner, which was a similar situation to what happened in Perth two weeks earlier.
It says a lot for Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s performance and the trust Erasmus has in him that he was taking important kicks at a tense stage of the game even when Handre Pollard was on as a replacement, but what we wouldn’t know from watching from the sidelines is the role Pollard, and before that Damian de Allende, might have played in keeping him composed.
Elrigh Louw came on as a replacement to join a back row that featured man of the match Pieter-Steph du Toit and the irrepressible Kwagga Smith. Perhaps it is no surprise then that he too was bang on target right away, while earlier in the game Ben-Jason Dixon was solid in his first ever game against Kiwi opponents at senior level with Du Toit playing in the same pack and skipper Siya Kolisi and Jasper Wiese with him in the back row partnership.
WIESE DESERVES MENTION TOO
Wiese is deserving of special mention, as he was as much a concern from the aspect of an unknown factor beforehand as Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Fassi, Nortje and Dixon were. Everyone knows Wiese’s ability, but was he going to be ready for such a high level game after being sidelined for so long through suspension. For a while Wiese was the outstanding loose-forward on the field, and the All Black back row men are no slouches.
Then there was Damian de Allende, who played such a pivotal role in the early parts of the game, when the visitors were dominating, with two excellent scramble and potentially try saving tackles, plus some key turn-overs.
The Boks have massive depth in his position, with the silky distributive and creative skills of Lukhanyo Am possibly being added after some recent games to Andre Esterhuizen and of course two players with utility value, Handre Pollared and the currently injured Damian Willemse. Feinberg-Mngomezulu can also play there. But De Allende is still the clear first choice.
Yes, there were mistakes, and yes, we could easily have been talking a different tune this morning as the Boks, in their quest to grow their game, did get tripped up at times because they were rushing things. But had it not been for the Barrett intercept, with that kind of intercept, which wasn’t the product of pressure, always entailing an element of luck, the Boks might well have won more comprehensively.
NEED TO MEET THE EXPECTATION
The Boks can afford to lose at the DHL Stadium on Saturday and still be favourites to win the Championship.
They will just need to win one of their remaining two games against Argentina. But the pressure isn’t really off as there is expectation now, plenty of it, and the Boks will know from their experience in 2022, when they comprehensively won the first game against the All Blacks and then lost the second, as well as the more recent Lions series, that it might be worse to lose the second game than the first. For there is some truth in that old saying that it is the last game that is remembered the longest.
There’s never been any doubt that for this mini-series against the All Blacks to end with them maintaining the status they’ve assumed in the world game, they need to win both games. But who is going to doubt Erasmus if he changes a winning team and comes up with some curve ball selections?
Selections which are increasingly appearing less curve ball than astute as the Erasmus plan to grow his depth around the base created by having so many double World Cup winners continues apace.
The more the Boks win, the more they and their coach, and the plan, gets empowered.
WEEKEND CASTLE LAGER RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS
South Africa 31 New Zealand 27
Argentina 19 Australia 20