Against the Odds - three World Cups no-one saw coming

“Against the odds”. There couldn’t be a more apt title for a panel discussion on South Africa’s three Rugby World Cup triumphs, for the Springboks have had a mountain to climb every time they have managed to reach the pinnacle of achievement in their sport.

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Perhaps the 2007 win was an outlier in some ways as the Boks of that year were helped a bit by the teams that knocked out their main challengers, New Zealand and Australia. John Smit’s team arrived in France as one of the favourites and started well by beating champions England convincingly in a pool game, but were definitely given a leg up on the quarterfinal weekend when the All Blacks and Wallabies exited at the hands of France and England respectively.

Jake White’s men did have plenty of odds to face down on their journey through that four year World Cup cycle. Remember the 49-0 defeat in Brisbane in 2006, when Schalk Burger was out injured and Bok rugby seemed to be in disarray. The coach was called home by South African rugby bosses during the tour of Ireland and England later that year to explain results.

The Springboks'' World Cup triumphs will be discussed in depth by our panel of experts in our once-off watch-along "Against the Odds" which airs at 8pm tonight on the SuperSport Rugby channel.

And at the very first World Cup, 1995, no-one would have given Francois Pienaar’s team much chance given that South Africa were still relatively newly back from the long period of isolation. They lost away series to Australia in 1993 and New Zealand in 1994 and when Kitch Christie took over as coach the situation was troubled enough for him to describe his mission as “an ambulance job”.

It was then that the trend in Bok World Cup campaigns was set - not giving an inch on the field as the players played for something that was much bigger than themselves, and something that went way beyond just rugby. Something encapsulated in the Hollywood movie, Invictus, and there was no hyperbola in the central theme that Pienaar’s team were playing to unite a nation.

The most recent World Cup win in Japan in 2019 is still recent enough to be fresh in the memories and few would need reminding what Siya Kolisi’s men were playing for when they faced down England in the Yokohama final. If ever the South African nation needed a morale boost, it was then, and it was provided by a squad that had fought against many odds in a four year cycle that began disastrously.

Two consecutive 50 point losses under the previous coach set up new mentor Rassie Erasmus for what most would have described as a mission impossible, and yet, with Kolisi installed as captain and the players responding to the Erasmus’ forthright and honest coaching style, they overcame the odds to win the biggest prize in rugby and rule the world.

The panel discussion Against the Odds airs on Thursday night…