South African rugby is riding the crest of a wave, with the Junior Springboks continuing the trend of national teams blowing away opposition in Georgia at the weekend, but it’s fortunate that the Springbok coaches and players are keeping their feet firmly rooted to the ground.
It’s not difficult to find a good example of what can happen when a team or its coach gets ahead of itself. The England team that will face the Boks in the first ever Nations Championship game contested by either side at Ellis Park at the weekend are the perfect example. They got too far ahead of themselves in the buildup to the Guinness Six Nations earlier this year.
It will be recalled that in the buildup to his team’s kick-off to the competition against Wales, England coach Steve Borthwick’s confidence found public expression in his call to England fans to buy tickets for the game against France in Paris that would conclude their campaign. Borthwick suggested that it would be a competition decider and that his team would be playing for the Grand Slam at Stade de France.
GOOD REASON FOR THE CONFIDENCE
There was good reason for the confidence too - England had found good form in Argentina with a team denuded of British and Irish Lions stars last July and had followed it up with an impressive run of results in the autumn internationals. Among their victims was New Zealand, with the All Blacks being thumped 33-19 at Twickenham, while Australia were seen off 25-7.
The other Rugby Championship team, Los Pumas, were beaten in a close game at the end of the Autumn Series but that was with an understrength England team. Some South Africans took umbrage to the England captain, Maro Itoje, who is being rested for this trip, stating after the win over the All Blacks that he wished they were about to play the Boks.
But the irritation it caused in this country may have been because his words were misinterpreted. Far from being a confident proclamation about how his team would go against the South Africans, it was more likely a realistic assessment - these days you need to measure yourself against the Boks before you can consider yourself among the best.
With France having lost to the Boks in Paris earlier in November, England were the form European team, and after their win over the All Blacks the recognised second-best team in the world, even if the World Rugby rankings didn’t reflect it. They were the coming team, the growing team, and their form was the reason that Bok coach Rassie Erasmus stated near the start of this year, before the Six Nations kicked off, that he was focusing everything first on the 4 July England game rather than jumping ahead to the main event of this international season - the four-match Greatest Rivalry Series against the All Blacks.
BEING WOUND UP IS WHAT POLLOCK THRIVES ON
Some might have thought he took a bit of a swipe at Borthwick when he described him in a press conference last week as a coach “who chases trends”, but other than that, he’s been nothing but respectful to England. He described Henry Pollock, the precocious but immensely talented young England loose-forward, as a generational talent like Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, stating that he looked at the player's work-rate rather than his flamboyance.
If the South Africans who are taking the Neanderthal approach of taking crude pop shots at Pollock on social media wiped away the red mist of patriotism from their eyes and looked at it objectively, they’d see Erasmus is right. Pollock is indeed a sublime talent, as he showed when he starred as a 19-year-old in an unexpected win for Northampton Saints in an Investec Champions Cup game at Loftus two seasons ago.
Being wound up is what Pollock thrives on, and Erasmus will know that anything said tending towards the negative about the player will just add to his motivation. And if Erasmus wishes he could have more control of the narrative being driven by his team’s supporters on social media and some parts of the mainstream media, it would be understandable.
THIS IS NO GATHERING OF LAMBS
For England are not the gathering of lambs ready for the slaughter that their second last position in the Six Nations might suggest they are. If you take the line that you are only as good as your last game, then England aren’t bad at all, for they scored seven tries against France in Paris in their last outing and were decidedly unlucky to lose that game.
The context of England’s fall from grace in the Six Nations also needs to be looked at. After the easy win over Wales, they were styling and the confidence of going for a Grand Slam was there. But Scotland are not to be trifled with when it comes to matches against the Auld Enemy, particularly when they are at home at Murrayfield. There were warnings ahead of that game about Scotland’s good record against England at the venue that weren’t heeded, and Scotland cut them apart. As indeed they did France later in the competition.
SIX NATIONS FAILURE HAD CONTEXT
That defeat would have been a massive psychological blow to England given their hopes of bidding for a Grand Slam and they hadn’t recovered by the time they played an Ireland team that was smarting after a poor start against France. It led to the inevitable media backlash, with the UK critics always prone to two extremes - purple prose building up their team as potential world beaters when they win but the harbingers of doom and crisis if they lost two games in a row.
They were at a low ebb psychologically when they lost to Italy in Rome, the first time they’d ever lost to that nation. But by the time they got to Paris, with the shackles off because they had nothing to play for, they were back on an even keel. In throwing everything at France in their own fortress and scoring seven tries to six in a ridiculously high-scoring game, England would have regained a lot of confidence.
They arrived in this country last week laden with players who showed good form in the Gallagher Premiership, and in some cases the Champions Cup too. Borthwick may chase trends but if he levelled out a trend in Paris then England are extremely dangerous and certainly not set up for the bruising or nightmare that some of the headlines they would have seen since arriving here are predicting.
BOKS CAN BE VULNERABLE AT START OF SEASON
At home, the Boks should be favourites and are favourites. At altitude they are favourites. But then they were also favourites the last time they played at Ellis Park. Remember that Wallaby game, anyone?
There’s another thing that should be weighted against the general confidence that seems to be flowing through the Bok support base - when the game is being played. It is the start of the international season for the Boks, they last played in November. England last played just three months ago.
The Boks often start a new season with a few hiccups in their game. Remember the second half against Italy at Loftus last year? And the game against Wales at Loftus in 2022 when Damian Willemse had to be relied on for a last-gasp penalty to win it?
More recently than that, the Boks did start off with a win against Ireland in Pretoria in 2024, but Ireland rallied in the second half to almost steal it from them and then a week later Ireland won at Kings Park to deny the Boks the revenge they were seeking from their loss to Ireland in their pool game in the 2023 Rugby World Cup.
There’s plenty of good reason for the Boks to be treading warily, for them to be seeking a win as a bottom line rather than a winning margin, which is how some South Africans are looking at this game. Fortunately, from a South African viewpoint, the Boks are not their supporters and know that while England are currently sixth on the rankings, they have the potential to be much better than that. They showed it in Paris just three months ago. They showed it against the All Blacks last November. Underestimate them at your peril.
NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP FIXTURE ROUND 1
South Africa v England (Ellis Park, Johannesburg, Saturday 5.40pm)