By winning in Cape Town and Soweto the Springboks have ensured that at the bare minimum they have defended their territory and prevented what for them would have been the disaster of seeing the All Blacks have the bragging rights of winning the mini-series in South Africa.
However, much though many of us would wish it to have been otherwise, and it really would have made far more sense to have the first Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series trophy be presented in front of the nearly 87 000 people that made their way into the FNB Stadium for another enthralling contest and spectacle, rather than across the Atlantic in Baltimore, the reality is that the RGR trophy will go to the winner over four tests.
In time the RGR trophy that was unveiled at a function in Bryanston last month will become like the Ashes urn that the England and Australian cricket teams have fought tooth and nail for over nearly 150 years. That is the intention and the appetite for this match-up has been confirmed over the past month.
The RGR trophy is not a secondary trophy like, for instance, the Freedom Cup, which the Boks retained when their come from behind win in the third test took them 2-1 up and made their lead in this series unassailable.
When the Boks head to New Zealand for a return series in 2030, when Rassie Erasmus is slated to still be the Bok coach, they will want to do it as the holders of the trophy. By then it might also have been decreed that, much like the Ashes, the team challenging to take it away from the holders has to win the series outright to prevent the holders from continuing to hold the trophy.
EXPECTATION AT THE START WAS BOKS WINNING OUTRIGHT
Given the expectation at the start of this series, with the Boks entering as clear favourites and recognised as some way ahead of the rest in their status as the No 1 team in the world, anything less than a 3-1 win will leave Erasmus, skipper Siya Kolisi and the squad feeling flat and that they’d fallen short of their set purpose.
The momentum has already swung markedly in the Bok favour from the week after the first test, when some New Zealand pundits frankly might have got just a little bit carried away with their 1-0 series lead.
Yes, the All Blacks did score five tries to one, which is a thumping in anyone’s book, but the Boks conspired against themselves with their rustiness and Kolisi might well have had a point when after Saturday’s game he pointed to Ellis Park as the Boks’ most dominant performance so far. In a way it was, although the last 25 minutes of the Soweto game came close to it.
ONLY LOST IN JOBURG BECAUSE THEY FAILED TO LAND KILLER PUNCH
In short, the Boks lost in Johannesburg because they just failed to land the killer blow that seemed inevitable at the time and may have punched themselves out, to use boxing parlance, in their quest to emulate what they did to Ireland in Dublin last year by smashing the All Blacks physically.
Since then there’s been an adjustment, and while the Australian referee Angus Gardner failed to reward their scrum in Cape Town, the Boks were still more comfortable winners than the end score suggested. With three minutes to go, the Boks were leading by 14 points, and the late All Black try just put a false gloss on a game that was never as close as a seven point margin suggested.
The same can be said for this past weekend’s game. The Boks, in their eagerness to get another score to really underline their superiority, made some poor decisions and overplayed in the last five minutes, thus giving the Kiwis the in for their last try that cut a 12 point winning margin to five.
But it was even more of a consolation effort than the one scored in Cape Town, because by the time their reserve hooker dotted down the Boks had won the game.
The All Blacks have dazzled with their attacking game, and there were times in the first half at the FNB Stadium where they looked like they were the better team. Indeed, it was the first time in the series that they had been leading up to a point just short of halftime, only for them to surrender that lead by conceding a penalty try that saw the sides level at 12-all at the break.
That was one of the turning points in the game, another was the massive maul that sent Malcolm Marx over to complete what he failed to do in the first test by dotting down. Apart from going more than a score behind, with a Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu penalty then increasing the deficit, the All Blacks would have been mentally destroyed by that try. For their attempts at defending it were ineffectual and borderline embarrassing.
It confirmed what most knew all along - that the Boks have the power game to hurt New Zealand, something that had already been confirmed by the five scrum penalties, and penalty try, from their own scrum put-ins.
And yet Erasmus mentioned the two late tries in the post match press conference at the FNB and he didn’t sound satisfied with that. He also kept his feet firmly rooted to the ground by proclaiming that while it was good to be in a position where his team couldn’t lose the series, the main mission had still to be accomplished.
THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT TROPHY TO WIN
In short, there is a trophy to win, and it is a significant one. The British and Irish Lions tours that each of the southern hemisphere big three host every 12 years is big because of the infrequency of the contests and also because of the hype and importance attached to it by the UK media and the thousands of travelling fans that follow those tours and series.
But a four test series between the two nations who have won seven of the 10 World Cup trophies played for since 1987 is undeniably much more difficult to win than a three-test rubber against a team that starts out as a scratch combination at the beginning of every tour. That is because of the quality of opposition and the intense though respectful rivalry between the two teams.
Even some UK scribes were suggesting before the weekend that a series win for the All Blacks in South Africa would be bigger for them than winning the Webb Ellis trophy. While that may seem far-fetched, four games in four weeks between the top two teams in the world is measurably harder than four World Cup knock-out games, even given the poor draw both nations have been given for next year, with a clash between them in the quarterfinals a strong likelihood.
Adding the inaugural RGR trophy to the two World Cups, three Rugby Championship trophies and the Lions series that has been won by the Boks since Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber took over will be a massive achievement and confirm their dominance of the global game.
Defeat at Baltimore will still leave the All Blacks short of their stated goal of matching Sean Fitzpatrick’s team by winning the South African leg, but will give the Boks’ arch-rivals a share of a trophy most of their countrymen never expected them to get near to on this tour. So Baltimore matters to the Boks. It should matter a lot.
THE RUGBY’S GREATEST RIVALRY SERIES RESULTS SO FAR
First Test, Ellis Park, Johannesburg - New Zealand won 33-16
Second Test, DHL Stadium, Cape Town - South Africa won 33-26
Third Test, FNB Stadium, Soweto - South Africa won 29-24
Final Test - Saturday, 12 September, Baltimore (USA), Kick-off 11pm SA time.
South Africa lead four game series 2-1