DETERMINED: Why winning this Rugby Championship is important for the Boks

If there was one clear message out of the Springbok camp this week, it is to forget the permutations. The Boks have made it clear they are going out to finish the Rugby Championship in style.

Coach Rassie Erasmus was emphatic in his assessment of the state of play, and underlined the belief that winning this year’s championship would be as big as anything the team had achieved outside of the Rugby World Cup.

While the Boks won a shortened Castle Lager Rugby Championship in 2019, Erasmus made it clear that they didn’t see that as a full victory - and pointed to the fact the Boks had last won a full Championship in 2009.

Before that, the only other two times the Boks have claimed glory in the Southern Hemisphere tournament was when it was the Tri Nations in 2004 and 1998 - the latter in which Erasmus played.

“I think people also forget that, people say we last won the Rugby Championship in 2019 but that was like a shortened version, it was only a single round,” Erasmus explained.

“So I think this will be, if we manage to do it on Saturday, only the fourth time in history. I think it was 1998 when I was a player, and then in 2004 and 2009. So it's actually been a couple of years since we actually won the full Rugby Championship.”

Erasmus added that this was fuelling the side this week, and would serve also as a key crowning point for Eben Etzebeth, who becomes the most capped Springbok on Saturday when he takes the field to break Victor Matfield’s record of 127 caps.

𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚: Rassie Erasmus names his Springbok side for the Rugby Championship decider against Argentina in Mbombela 🇿🇦

Eben Etzebeth will become the most capped Springbok of all time 👏 pic.twitter.com/0p0pVvvrU1

— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) September 24, 2024

“It will be fitting for Eben to add this - it will be a nice takeaway for him because that is one of the things he may not have achieved in his career. He can perhaps do that on Saturday. But then again there is an Argentinian team standing in our way.”

Erasmus noted that in 2022 the Boks could have won the Rugby Championship when a bizarre situation played out in the Bledisloe Cup when Bernard Foley was penalised for time-wasting and the All Blacks came back to win a game they should have lost.

That meant that the game against Argentina needed to be won by 46 points, something that was beyond the Boks' ability at that time.

“Yeah, two years ago we were in a position when Australia just needed to kick the ball out against New Zealand and the referee said it was time wasting,” Erasmus said.

“And then we had to score 46 points versus Argentina to win the Rugby Championship in Durban. We worked out that we had to score every 14 minutes, then we would make it. We scored the first try and the referee didn't give it.”

This week Argentina have an outside chance of stealing the trophy away from the Boks, but they will need to deny the Boks a bonus point and score three more tries than the Boks to do it, in front of a partisan 42 000-strong crowd at Mbombela stadium on Saturday.

Erasmus said while he was very aware that Argentina would try to run the Boks “off our feet”, the double World Cup champions had plans in place to prevent it from happening.

“They'll definitely have a plan and the plan will be to run us off our feet. But our plan is to win. We lost one game in the Rugby Championship by one point and we've now got an opportunity at home to claim the trophy.

“None of these guys have held a Rugby Championship Cup up - a full Rugby Championship. So we are going out to win, not to try and stop them.”