BOK WRAP: World's top team while still a work in progress

Part of the allure of sport is the way it can produce the unexpected and how underdogs can completely turn around the form book and the expectation on a given day, but for that to happen when the Springboks visit Cardiff on Saturday would beggar belief.

While the Boks beat England at Twickenham by nine points and were once again far from happy with their performance, the under-fire coach for their last game of the year and this tour, Wales’ Warren Gatland, was seeking some solace from a 20 minute purple patch where his men were competitive against Australia.

Gatland, who with his words appeared to be acknowledging the game against the Boks might be his last in charge of Wales, had to find something to be positive about. And the second part of the first half was the stand-out there, with the hosts at the Principality Stadium fighting back from a 19-0 deficit at the end of the first quarter to trail 19-13 at halftime.

To be fair, there was some encouragement for Wales in that period. If they could play for 80 minutes like that they might well trouble bigger teams and have a chance of ending a losing run that now extends to 11 matches. Yet it is clutching at straws - Australia showed in the second half, when they scored 33 points to seven, that the brief Welsh fightback probably owed a lot to their own complacency. In the second half they were down to 14 men for 20 minutes due to the red card to Samu Kerevi, and it woke them up.

So you can probably bet your house that while it is likely the Boks will field an experimental team in the last match of the year, the South Africans will win comfortably and make it 11 wins in 13 starts this year to confirm their No 1 spot on the World Rugby rankings, with the two losses being only by a solitary point.

YOU CAN TAKE POISON THEY WILL END LESS THAN SATISFIED

The way it has gone this year, you can probably also take poison that the Boks will end the last game feeling less than satisfied with their performance. For it has been thus all but once since the world champions opened this World Cup cycle with a comprehensive win over Wales in London in June.

The most recent Twickenham game and the wash-up to it conformed to a trend that has developed for the Boks in this first World Cup year. They won, and the coach in a quest not to be seen as arrogant, said he was content. As you should be whenever you beat England at their headquarters. And yet his words after that indicated that he was actually far from satisfied.

Not that we needed Erasmus to tell us that. The reaction of his players at the final whistle told us how the camp as a whole felt. There was no celebratory hugging and backslapping from the players. Maybe it was because they’d played themselves to a standstill against an England team that did raise its game, but the coaching box was the same. No fist-pumps. Just earnest conversation.

We have seen a similar reaction in various different degrees throughout the international season. Any win over the All Blacks will be celebrated, but even after those two significant Castle Lager Rugby Championship wins there was a lot of focus afterwards on what went wrong for the Boks. Particularly after the Johannesburg game.

And it has been thus for arguably 11 of the 12 games played so far. Even after the win over Ireland in the opening test of that series in Pretoria, there was a feeling the Boks left too many points on the table during their period of dominance in the first half. And then there were defensive errors that the Irish exploited in the second half that nearly saw them claim a come from behind win.

SEEK PERFECTION

The modern Boks have evolved to a point where they seek perfection, and that has come but once in 2024 - in the big win over the Pumas in Nelspruit that clinched them the Championship title in the last weekend of September. Perhaps it was their desire to reprise that performance the last time the team that played at Twickenham had played each other that led to the muted response to victory.

Both Erasmus and SA Rugby chief executive Rian Oberholzer earlier in the tour told the UK media that the need to expand the reach of the Bok brand meant that it was no longer enough to just win. It was clear from their words that the Boks would be looking for a statement performance in the game that always arguably has the most global reach.

Yet wasn’t it a statement of sorts? That the Boks won at Twickenham without bludgeoning the England forwards into submission, which used to be the accepted route to victory, was surely a statement in itself.

If they feel they fell short of what they wanted they shouldn’t be hard on themselves. Even the most acerbic of Bok critics in the UK media acknowledged that their team, for all of its commitment and endeavour, was beaten by a world champion side operating short of top gear. And that it wasn’t the usual brutally physical Bok performance, but one which relied on the pace of the wings and X-factor at the back to win.

The Boks have won 10 games out of 12 this year, soon to be 11 out of 13, while still growing aspects of their game but still obviously doing enough to win, and usually win with something to spare. That’s not something to be depressed about, and their ability to find ways to win is very different to the diametric opposite position to what a very promising England team is in - they don’t know how to win.

ALL BLACK SCRUM SHOULD MAKE SA WARY

Saturday, if you watched both of the big games, with the Bok match being followed by the epic showdown between France and New Zealand in Paris, also gave us an indication of why it is necessary to grow their game so that they are no longer just a first phase team. The All Blacks lost, but dominated much of the game for the simple reason that they out-scrummed France.

Unfortunately for them they were not rewarded by the referee, and the officiating played a big part in their eventual one point loss, but the All Blacks scrum has grown to a point where, if it is not already, it could soon be the equal of the Bok unit.

London was a game where the Bok win, unlike the 2019 World Cup in Yokohama against the same opponents, was not scripted around scrum dominance. Good, because in the battles with the All Blacks that will be the highlight of the next two seasons - the two Championship games in New Zealand next year and then the seismic series that will be played SA the following year - Bok scrum dominance might not be a given. The balance of power might even lean in the other direction.

Their improvements in their scrumming and other crucial aspects of forward play during the course of this first season under Razor Robertson make the All Blacks dangerous as potential future challengers to the Boks for the No 1 spot. They also have an average age across their playing squad of just 24.

WINNING WHILE GROWING DEPTH AND INNOVATING

The Boks don’t have that but fortunately they have a coach who recognises the need to refresh while winning, and as Supersport commentator Matthew Pearce reminded us towards the end of the Twickenham game, prop Wilco Louw was the 50th different player used by Erasmus this year.

That is indicative of the depth that is being built, and the synopsis of wins and losses is an indication that it’s working. And all this is happening while the Boks are being unpredictable and wonderfully innovative, with the latest game, among other things, seeing Damian de Allende at one point injected into the lineout and a lineout ball also being thrown to Kurt-Lee Arendse.

Of course, it doesn’t always work, and it won’t when everything is relatively new. But it will come. The fact that 50 different players have been used also explains why the Boks have only properly hit their straps once, in Mbombela. The team that played this past Saturday hadn’t played since that 48-7 win over the Pumas. The 11 changes made to the side for the Scotland game explained the rust in that performance, and it probably also did the appearance that for much of the Twickenham game the hosts looked the better connected team.

Until the final minutes that is. That is when England lost shape and suffered a melt-down, as they tend to do late in games. And the Boks, with the calmness brought by Handre Pollard’s arrival on the field playing a big role, once again showed their temperament and the confidence that comes with being a team that has a winning habit.

There’s a very strong foundation for Erasmus and his fellow coaches to build on as the buildup to Australia 2027 intensifies and gathers pace in 2025.

WEEKEND INTERNATIONAL RESULTS

England 20 South Africa 29

France 30 New Zealand 29

Scotland 59 Portugal 21

Italy 20 Georgia 17

Wales 20 Australia 52

Ireland 22 Argentina 19