Ireland will be coming to altitude and crossing the equator but the eagerly anticipated two-game series against the world champion Springboks that starts with the first test in Pretoria on Saturday has a much more level playing field than has been the case for past incoming tours.
While England and Wales will be starting their respective series against New Zealand and Australia in the Antipodes at the end of a long season against teams that should be relatively fresh as their seasons aren’t yet halfway done, that is not the case with Ireland’s opponents.
Now that South African rugby is aligned to the northern hemisphere season, the fact that the Irish players have been on the go since their World Cup buildup started with a training camp over a year ago is not a disadvantage for them. For the Boks have been in season since then too.
Yes, the locally based World Cup winners were given a three weeks break before resuming business with their franchises in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship and Investec Champions Cup from the end of last November.
And there was also a short obligatory rest period thrown in during March, when the Home Union teams, France and Italy were playing in the Guinness Six Nations.
But the overseas internationals were also rested before being sent in to action by their clubs, remembering of course that a team like Ireland, because they were knocked out early, finished the World Cup in France in mid-October instead of the end of October.
And with so many of the Ireland internationals who make up the 35-man group currently in South Africa playing for Leinster, where player management and rest are almost over-prioritised at times, the visitors shouldn’t be going into this two game series feeling like they are out on their feet.
BOKS WILL BE IN SAME BOAT THIS TIME
At least, unlike in the past when South African rugby was aligned to the southern hemisphere season, if they do feel the impact of a long season their opponents will be in the same boat.
This makes this series, which will be concluded with the second test in Durban on 13 July, a far better measurement of where the respective teams stand in relation to each other than has often been the case in matches played between World Cups.
In the past the southern teams have travelled for their November, or Autumn tours to the northern hemisphere under a similar disadvantage. That may be the case for Australia and New Zealand later this year, but not the Boks, although it does need to be added that something does need to be done to ensure there is a distinct off-season for local players in South Africa.
The Currie Cup will now be played in the two month window that should be the local offseason out of economic necessity for some of the unions who’d have been under threat had it not been the case.
But the MiPlayers move to have it suspended, which they won on arbitration, did have a valid point to it and it is something that needs to be heeded going forward.
Sam Warburton believes Ireland are still the best team in the world.@VictorMatfield and Swys de Bruin are not buying that argument at all!
— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) June 30, 2024
📺 Watch Final Whistle Presents Side Entry on Catch Up pic.twitter.com/YkUoKLWJUj
For the foreseeable future, as long as the Castle Lager Rugby Championship is played in its current window and South Africa plays in that competition, the Boks may be compromised, particularly the overseas based players who do not play for teams that are subject to obligatory resting protocols.
The treadmill of non-stop rugby the South African players are currently on may have consequences down the road if the burden is not eased.
WORLD CHAMPS AGAINST KINGS OF EUROPE
That though is something for the administrators to consider and sort out. Right now what will interest rugby fans is that the two top teams in the world currently, the World Cup champions and the kings of Europe, which Ireland are by virtue of being successive Six Nations champions, are about to clash in a seismic series in which both have points to prove.
For the Boks it is about, as the advert being flighted on Supersport states, making one more point. The last time these two teams met was one week over two months ago, in a World Cup Pool match in Paris.
At the time it was regarded as the best match of the tournament, only surpassed later by the two quarterfinals involving the eventual finalists, the Boks and the All Blacks.
The Springbok options at wing this weekend 🥶 pic.twitter.com/7aCucQq2iX
— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) June 30, 2024
South Africa lost 13-8 in a game that was incredibly frustrating for their supporters and no doubt the players and coaches too. The Boks had several opportunities to win, but were error ridden on the night and missed kicks for goal, something that also blighted them when the two teams previously met, which was in Dublin in November 2022.
That was another close game but it won’t be the small margins that irk the Boks, rather the fact they lost. And they haven’t beaten Ireland since they clinched the 2016 series in Port Elizabeth.
That’s more than eight years since the now successive world champions have beaten Ireland, and they are the only team not to have been beaten by the Boks in the Rassie Erasmus era.
IRISH HAVE A FRONTIER THAT NEEDS CROSSING
While the Boks will be out to rectify that, the Irish will still be smarting that they once again fell short at a World Cup. They exited at the quarterfinal stage, and have never been further than that, but as Bok lock Eben Etzebeth told the media recently, after their win over the Boks they told their opponents they would see them in the final.
That is how confident they were that they’d beat the All Blacks in the quarterfinal.
For them, the mission of this trip will surely be to show the world that had they gone to the decider in France last October, they’d have had a great chance of winning. They will want to prove that while the Boks have usurped their status as the top ranked team, a position they held for a year before the World Cup, they are still as good as if not better than the No 1 team.
Then of course there is the question of the frontier that needs crossing. Ireland made history by winning their first ever series in New Zealand two years ago. The last time they were here they won a game against the Boks in South Africa for the first time. But they did not win the series, and that remains a barrier they have yet to traverse.
It will be what they are chasing when the series starts at the weekend.
With the Bok coach able to pick 12 of the players who were part of the Paris game, and Ireland’s boss Andy Farrell able to pick 11, there will be enough players who have relatively fresh memories of their intense and physical clash on 23 September last year. It promises to be a combustible and intriguing start to the home international season in South Africa.
Castle Lager test Series: South Africa v Ireland
6 July: Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria (Kickoff 5:05pm)
13 July: Hollywoodbets Kings Park, Durban (Kickoff 5:05pm)