In 1994, New Zealand clinched a series win over the Springboks in Wellington with a narrow win, thus turning the final game in Auckland into a dead rubber. Does anyone remember the score? That is doubtful, but many people will probably remember what happened after the game.
Bok prop Johan le Roux was picked up on television replays immediately post game taking a munch out of the ear of All Black skipper Sean Fitzpatrick at a loose scrum. The reaction was both vehement and immediate and on my way back to my hotel from the old Athletic Park venue it was already the only thing being discussed on the radio playing in the taxi.
The Springboks end 2025 with an eight-match winning streak ✅🇿🇦#SSRugby pic.twitter.com/DolGIySBKr
— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) November 30, 2025
Later that night the Bok management reacted too - they called the journalists together. Coach Ian McIntosh, looking stunned, was just staring at a blank television screen as tour manager Jannie Engelbrecht told us that Le Roux was being sent home in disgrace. But the sanction didn’t end there for the prop. At a disciplinary hearing two days after the game he was banned from rugby for 19 months.
Unlike Le Roux, it won’t necessarily be the end of Eben Etzebeth’s long storied career with the Boks, and the ban shouldn’t be quite as long, but the lock can expect to be out of the sport for a long time following the eye-gouging incident that blighted the comprehensive 73-0 win over a depleted Wales team with which the Boks signed off a successful tour and successful year.
Just like Wellington will always be remembered for the Le Roux incident, so Cardiff will be remembered for what Etzebeth did.
THIS TIME IT’S HARD TO SEE AN EXCUSE
Eye-gouging, like biting, is rightly seen as one of the heinous acts in the game, and this time, unlike the red cards the Boks copped earlier in the tour and which dominated the narrative, there was no excuse.
Of course, there will be patriotic South Africans who will look for an excuse, and sure enough, there are images circulating on social media claiming to show a Welsh player gouging Etzebeth earlier in the game. But while if that is true the Welsh player should also be hauled in front of a DC, that shouldn’t be seen as an excuse for Etzebeth.
If he was gouged himself, the Bok lock could have waited the two minutes the game had left to run, and his team was leading by 73 points so were never going to lose, and then seen to it that justice was sought when it should always be sought. After the game.
Taking the law into your own hands doesn’t cut it, it never has, and if a “if you gouge me then I will gouge you” mentality became part of rugby lore the sport would become a barbaric gouging festival that would become unwatchable and switch off eyes. They don’t even allow eye gouging in the UFC!
So sadly what was always a meaningless game that should never have happened as there is a reason that international windows are in place, and the Boks were always going to massacre such a depleted Wales team, will always be remembered for only one thing.
BLIGHTED AN OTHERWISE PERFECT PERFORMANCE
Yet before the Etzebeth incident the Boks did what they had to do by whitewashing their inept opponents, with there being much truth in that old adage that you only play what is in front of you. The South Africans were perfect in almost everything they did, were brutally efficient, and Andre Esterhuizen at inside centre showed the strides he has made by moonlighting as a flank with the ease with which he took the ball across the gainline.
Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu showed further evidence of his maturing game management, Ruan Nortje reminded us again that he is now one of the top No 5 locks in the world, ditto many of the other players in their positions. For the younger players it was a further opportunity to build confidence. For someone like young Zachary Porthen, who did well at the unfamiliar position of loosehead prop when he came on, both the playing opportunity and the experience of standing on the field in front of so many Welshmen singing ‘Land of our Fathers’ would have proved an invaluable experience.
But what it was not was the statement performance some are making it out to be. The Boks produced their statement performances on this tour in Paris and in Dublin, and to an extent considering they won playing most of the 80 minutes down to 14 men and started with an experimental team, to some extent in Turin. Before that the standouts were Wellington against the All Blacks and Durban against the Pumas.
Beating Wales, considering the low ebb of rugby in that nation and that the team was dramatically weakened and inexperienced, wasn’t something to strut about. The strongest boy in the school doesn’t prove himself by beating up the weakest boys, he does it by taking on people of his own size.
CAN’T BLAME SHARKS BOSS IF HE IS APOPLECTIC
In that sense there wasn’t an awful lot of value to the game and if there is a person we should feel sorry for this morning it is the Sharks owner Marco Massotti. There’s a good chance his team will have to play the rest of the season without one of their most highly paid players in Etzebeth, and yet he will have to continue paying him. If he is apoplectic with rage, and we are hearing he is, he cannot be blamed.
For the player himself, apart from the undeniable damage to his brand, because there is rightly quite a stigma attached to eye-gouging, and every professional player knows the perils of putting his hands on another player’s face, the probable break he will get now could be just what he needs if he wants to be fresh and ready for the World Cup year in 2027.
He is one player who looks like he is definitely struggling with being on the ridiculous 12-month treadmill. It wouldn’t surprise though if there were fellow players who would envy Etzebeth if he does get enforced leave, particularly considering that poor Massotti is powerless to stop him being paid.
The New Zealand players they will face in next year’s Greatest Rivalry Series will all get this summer off. Not so the South Africans, and that could yet catch up with them.
Which is another reason why the out of window test should never have happened. As a point of fact, maybe the Boks shouldn’t have been playing in the URC this weekend had they not been on duty in Cardiff, as what they really needed was a week’s break before the start of the Investec Champions Cup this coming weekend.
That’s a competition SA needs to start becoming competitive in. As it stands the Sharks will have to be under-strength against Toulouse in Toulouse this week, and there’s a good chance the same thing will happen to them that happened to Wales…