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International Wrap: Talk of southern domination is premature

xtra11 November 2024 09:00
By:Gavin Rich
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Springboks © Getty Images

The Springboks are back in what most neutrals would agree is their rightful No 1 place on the World Rugby Rankings thanks to a weekend where the reigning global champions were helped out by their old foe New Zealand, but thoughts of southern domination should be put on hold.

Make no mistake, it is easy to take the line that the past few days have shown us that the Castle Lager Rugby Championship, competed for by the southern hemisphere nations, is the Premier League of world rugby, with the Six Nations being the First Division (or Championship if we are to stick to the English football analogy). The only northern team to win at the weekend that officially started the so-called Autumn Series was France, but then if you look at the world map, the team they beat, Japan, actually comes from north of the equator.

Argentina smashed Italy in Italy, the All Blacks went to Dublin and knocked the previously No 1 ranked team off its perch, the Boks did what was expected of them against Scotland in Edinburgh, and Australia shocked England at their Twickenham (Allianz Stadium) headquarters.

That is a clean sweep for Rugby Championship teams and it does suggest, on face value, that the fears that the southern hemisphere competition was slipping in global standing were greatly exaggerated.

CONTEXT IS NECESSARY

However, it does all need to be put in context, and once that is done, it may be that there will be agreement that the only real shock this past weekend was the result of the game in London. England had played the week before, and shouldn’t have the excuse that Ireland may have - which is that it was their first game of the new international season.

The All Blacks were full value for their victory in a scrappy game at the AVIVA Stadium. The win followed up from their close win over England the previous week, so it does suggest the Kiwis are back on the rise. They’d endured a poor run against Ireland until last year’s World Cup semifinal, which they won, so they’ve now beaten the Irish twice in a row.

But the fears of a suddenly more humble Irish rugby public that the result may reflect the ending of that nation’s golden era might be precipitate if you consider the context, which is that this was the first game Ireland have played since they beat South Africa with a last gasp drop-goal in Durban in July.

 

 

Since that day, which coincided with a narrow All Black win over England, the Kiwis had played nine games - the clash with Fiji in the United States, six Rugby Championship fixtures, the game against Japan en route to Europe, and then the England game in London. While it is true that most of the Irish players also play for Leinster in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship, the Ireland national team operates on a different system and includes players from other Irish provinces in key positions.

Ireland definitely looked short of a gallop against the All Blacks, and it might be explained by the rust that kept the Boks in third gear, only occasionally engaging fourth, in their match against Scotland on Sunday. In the South African case that rust could be attributed to the fact that not only were they playing their first game in six weeks against a team that had warmed up against Fiji a week earlier, they’d also made 11 changes to the side that beat Argentina 48-7 at Mbombela Stadium.

SAME HELD TRUE FOR IRELAND IN SA IN JULY

Ireland never had a warmup game and to be fair to them, it would have made much more sense for them to be playing the All Blacks later in November, rather than starting out with their biggest game of the autumn. Maybe then we would have got a fairer indication of where the two protagonists battling it out now for second position on the rankings stand.

Of course, that reasoning applies to the series played between the Boks and Ireland in South Africa in June too. There was much huff and puff from the Irish supporters after the win in Durban, with that result apparently enough to prove that their team was in fact still the No 1 side in the world, but there was a counter-argument at the time that the Boks would have been better prepared had the game been played later in the season.

And given how the Boks put it together against the Pumas in Nelspruit, that argument has some substance. Don’t forget that when the Boks opened the Ireland series with a win at Loftus, it was effectively the first time the frontline team had played since the World Cup final (the warmup against Wales in London was played with a scratch team with a mix of first choice and fringe players). Plus, there’s the evolution aspect - the Irish games coincided with the beginning of the introduction of something new to the Boks under their new assistant coaches Tony Brown and Jerry Flannery.

RWC IS THE ONLY REAL DETERMINANT OF GLOBAL ORDER

The debate about the global order that rages when the northern teams head south in July and when the southern teams head in the opposite direction in November has raged for years, but there are too many variables to treat these games as an absolute determinant of where everyone stands. This doesn’t count for South Africa anymore, as we seem to have a 12 month season in this country, but often when the southern teams head north at the end of the year they are tired as they near the end of a long season.

And ditto in July, when a nation like France often acknowledges the fatigue element, and need to protect players, by sending under-strength teams.

 

 

The World Cups, where nations go into training camps in the months building up to the event, are the only times where there’s a properly level playing field that can determine who is the best. Of course, the draw can be an ass, as it was last year, but the eventual winning team can be seen as the best. Winning the RWC requires good planning and the timing has to be right, and the Boks under Rassie Erasmus have got that right two times in a row - in 2019 and 2023.

They’ve only lost two games so far in 2024, and the context to the Irish defeat has been explained above and experimentation played a big role in the reverse in Argentina, plus they won the tournament that matters most in France last October. Not even a defeat to what should be a fired up England in London five days ago should be enough to undermine their status as the top team in the world regardless of what the rankings might say.

Weekend international results

Ireland 13 New Zealand 23

England 37 Australia 42

Italy 18 Argentina 50

France 52 Japan 12

Wales 19 Fiji 24

Scotland 15 South Africa 32

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