Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus has kept a firm eye on the future in his selections for the away leg of the Nations Championship, and there is a clear intent to grow the depth available to him ahead of the 2027 Rugby World Cup year. The question that needs to be asked though is - when are the young players called in going to play?
If the Boks are serious about wanting to win the Nations Championship, then points for and points against are going to be important. The South Africans are currently level pegging in the southern hemisphere pool with New Zealand, with the Springboks nominally ahead at the moment because of a superior points differential.
But that could change given that the All Blacks have a potentially easier away leg to look forward to than the Boks. While the Boks face Italy in Turin in their first game before going on to play France in Paris and then Ireland in Dublin, the big one for the All Blacks is their 21 November showdown with England at Twickenham.
Yes, Scotland will be tough at Murrayfield, but New Zealand usually win there with something to spare as a matter of course, even when pushed for part of the way, while the All Blacks tend to rack up big score wins over the Welsh in Cardiff, where they start their tour next week.
Given their free flowing playing style, you’d expect the All Blacks to score a lot of points, the question is only how many will they concede?
But how important is the Nations Championship really to Erasmus and his Boks, and for that matter to his All Black counterpart Dave Rennie?
The big event for the year for both nations was the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series. The All Blacks may be more motivated because they lost that series to win the Nations Cup trophy just to salvage something from the year, but for the Boks it has been a year where the main mission has been accomplished.
Erasmus followed up the RGR triumph by going under-strength against Australia as he started to look ahead to next year’s World Cup in that country, and apart from the opening game against England, he was in developmental mode for the home leg of the new Nations Championship, which has been brought in to give meaning to tour games but the jury is still out on how seriously it is being taken.
Against Scotland in Pretoria in July, Erasmus remained in experimental mode even when the Scots were threatening to win the Loftus game, and against Wales the following week he included several young players, such as the 20-year-old Sharks flyhalf Vusi Moyo and his equally young teammate Jaco Williams, at Hollywoodbets Kings Park.
There was no chasing of points differential in either of those games, which bings us back to the question - when does Erasmus play the six newcomers to his squad?
Yaqeen Ahmed, Markus Muller, Luan Giliomee and Riley Norton have either not yet reached 20 or have only just reached 20, and none of them have been playing long at senior level, with the other two newcomers being Immanuel Tshituka, the Sharks flank, and Bulls wing Sebastian de Klerk.
Erasmus has not tended to be like some previous Bok coaches in the sense of selecting players to tour so they can just carry tackle bags in training - not that any Bok squad member really fulfils that role anymore - and it would be a surprise were any of those new players to return home at the end of November without having earned at least one international cap.
Looking at the schedule, the opening game against Italy would be the ideal opportunity, for while Italy have improved, the French and Irish are going to provide much sterner challengers.
But if points differential was a concern, then that is the game you chase it, and it is also the game where you’d expect the Bok team that will play the big game against France the following week to work on cohesion after not playing together since the final RGR test match in Baltimore on 12 September.
The Nations Championship may not be Erasmus’ concern at all, even if he is probably forced to pay lip service to it, with his squad selection suggesting he’s doing what previous Bok coaches did in a November tour before a World Cup year - namely looking ahead as much as the here or now.
If the Boks win all their games and the All Blacks drop a game or drop points, then of course the Boks will go all out to win the Nations Championship if their log position at the end of the pool stage puts them in position to play the main final.
But it is unlikely to be Erasmus’ main focus - he has bigger fish to fry, and his selection suggests he’s not looking just at the RWC but the next World Cup cycle that comes beyond that.
Springbok November tour (European leg Nations Championship)
November 7, 2026: Italy v Springboks – Allianz Stadium, Turin
November 13, 2026: France v Springboks – Stade de France, Saint-Denis (Paris)
November 21, 2026: Ireland v Springboks – Aviva Stadium, Dublin