It is amazing what a difference winning makes. It was just over two years ago that the then Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber was criticised for making the 14 changes that contributed to Wales’ first ever win on South African soil. Rassie Erasmus made almost as many against the Wallabies in Perth, his team won, and he is lauded as a genius.
Which he undeniably is. There were some who questioned his decision to make 11 changes, if you include the positional switch, to the side that had so comprehensively wiped out talk of Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane being a hoodoo venue.
But the game at Optus Stadium provided a microcosmic view of why such mixing up selection is necessary.
Thomas du Toit, with just 19 caps, was by far the most experienced player in the tight five. The combined total of caps for the other four members of the forward unit was 11, with the skipper on the day, Salmaan Moerat, claiming eight of those.
Scrumhalf Morne van den Bergh was playing just his second game, flyhalf Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu his sixth. They both contributed to the win, as did the newcomers at forward.
But while the Boks were dominant in the period where all the newcomers were fronting, and should have been further than 11-9 up at halftime, there were some completely anticipated nerves that contributed to the visitors not quite converting their superiority onto the scoreboard.
For instance, hooker Johan Grobbelaar, missing his lineout jumpers, and Feinberg-Mngomezulu butchering a clear try scoring opportunity in addition to making some other elementary errors.
EXPERIENCED BENCH MADE SURE OF THE WIN
It was when one of the most experienced group of bench players in history came onto the field that the Boks ended the Wallaby challenge and made sure of the win. Ruan Nortje, with Malcolm Marx on the field, and with Eben Etzebeth next to him, was suddenly a much better player in the second half. The Boks were suddenly not only dominant, but also more clinical.
I repeat the earlier point: the players who were introduced played a full part in the win. There wasn’t one that you could say looked out of place at international level. Most of them are sure to get more opportunities, probably against Argentina in Nelspruit later in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship.
But the value of experience was underlined. Apart from Nortje, fullback Aphelele Fassi produced a stellar performance, not only on attack but also in the other key disciplines for his position, and he would have been calmed by having experienced heads like Cheslin Koble, Makazole Mapimpi, Lukhanyo Am and Jesse Kriel around him. Plus of course Handre Pollard, always such an ice-cool customer, in the second half.
The newcomers would have gained from the experience of playing an away match against a Tier 1 nation, which was Erasmus’ intention. Winning 30-12, and it could have been much more, was quite an achievement if you consider the significant levelling factors the Bok team had to deal with.
DEALT WELL WITH THE LEVELLING FACTORS
It is true that the Wallabies would have been stymied by the wet conditions as much as the Boks were, but inclement weather does often bring two teams that aren’t on the same level closer together. Then there were the uncontested scrums that took one of the big Bok weapons out of the equation.
Given that uncontested scrums mean you are guaranteed front foot ball, that the Wallabies never made any headway against the Bok defence, not even in the period when they’d been thrown that lifeline, spoke volumes for the Bok defence. The forwards cooked, the backs still looked dangerous when presented with opportunities despite the conditions.
The Boks have of course gone under-strength before in the Erasmus era. Apart from the aforementioned Wales game in Bloemfontein, where Erasmus would have had a big hand in the decision making even though Nienaber was coach, there were two home games against the Wallabies in the two World Cup years, 2019 and 2023, where the Boks won comfortably with what could have been deemed to be second string teams.
Indeed, it will be recalled that it was after being asked a question about losing to a second string team that got the then Australian coach Eddie Jones so incensed with a local journalist that the interaction went all over social media the day after last year’s win at Loftus.
But playing the Wallabies at home, or Wales at a neutral venue, with an under-strength team is very different to fielding such a side in an away game. And it would have meant so much more to the development of a playing group that by 2027 will be experienced enough not to show rough edges.
While all South Africans will be hoping that the bulk of the World Cup winning Bok group will still be firing in three years time, there is no guarantee of that. Most of them will be 35 or older. There are effectively only a maximum of 40 games to be played between the start of a new World Cup cycle and the beginning of a World Cup year.
This Bok team has already played six of those. So while three years seems a long time, it isn’t really. Erasmus has been bold in his selections, but he doesn’t have much choice if he wants to safeguard against the pitfalls of having a team that is over the hill contesting for the three-peat in 2027.
MIXING SELECTIONS AIDS LONGEVITY
And the selection also helps those older players in their quest to play another World Cup as them having games off mitigates against the potential of overload and increases their longevity. That Willie le Roux isn’t playing every week probably means he will be able to play for longer.
The South African participation in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship and the Investec Champions Cup is accentuating the need to grow depth at franchise level, and the focus on growing depth is paying off there.
It is being mirrored at Bok level, and while it would be wrong to relegate everything else in favour of World Cup focus, the Boks have now grown to a point under Erasmus where they can do both - win and build for the future at the same time.
You are to some extent a slave to fate and fortune at a World Cup. Knock-out games, as we saw last year, can be decided by fine margins, by the bounce of the ball. But what you can do is control the controllables, and that is what Erasmus is doing with a selection policy that covers so many bases.