The retirement of Duane Vermeulen was a reminder of the period of renewal the Springboks will have to go through if they are to make it a hat-trick of consecutive Rugby World Cup titles in Australia in 2027.
Vermeulen was 37 when he stepped away from the sport that made him famous and which saw him earn two World Cup winners medals, and Deon Fourie, who was my unsung Bok hero of the most recent World Cup, is 38. But you can’t have more than one or two players of that age, so the fact that every player in the starting pack in the 2023 RWC final was over 30 means the Boks are in a different place to where they were in 2019.
After the triumph in Japan, the players were mostly in their mid- to late twenties. It contributed to Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber being able to call on the most experienced core of Bok players in their quest to retain the Webb Ellis trophy, with most of those players still being in their prime.
Who would be the most likely player to reprise the Vermeulen feat of being there again after the age of 35 when the next World Cup kicks off? If I had to bet on one of the current group doing that, there’d be two reasons I would go for Eben Etzebeth, who will be 36 in 2027.
First, he is such an important part of the Bok success, and second he is signed up as a Sharks player until 2027. He appears to have made a long-term commitment.
However, while this won’t go down with Sharks fans or for that matter those people who coach at the Sharks, if Etzebeth is to follow in Vermeulen’s footsteps, his current trend of not playing much outside the international season may have to continue.
There are of course other members of the Bok pack who could be there again. Different rules appear to apply to front-row forwards so Frans Malherbe, who will be 36, Steven Kitshoff (35), Ox Nché (32) and Malcolm Marx (33), who might have had his hunger for one more go heightened by missing out on the bulk of this World Cup, could all be possible returnees in 2027.
Playing all of them will, though, mean the Boks will have a very old pack, so we shouldn’t hold out for too many more of the World Cup winners being there outside RG Snyman, 32 at the next RWC, who should step out from his Bomb Squad role to lead the line-out going forward.
Not that any of this should overly concern Rassie Erasmus, who will guide the team for at least the next two years, right now. We all know they were helped by the draw, but if there was one thing England did at this World Cup it was remind us again of the folly of focusing on the tournament too far ahead.
So much at a World Cup comes down to a one-off game, where you are at the mercy of fate, the bounce of the ball and refereeing calls, and the England team that ditched their coach of seven years just nine months out from the RWC came within three minutes of making the final.
Preparation time
It is the Boks of 2019 though that remain the standard bearers for the argument that a World Cup doesn’t require four years of preparation. The Boks conceded 57 points to the All Blacks in two different games in 2016 and 2017 and yet were crowned as world champions in 2019.
Of course it did take a change in coach, but that cues a point, because Erasmus is in a similar situation now to what his predecessor was in when he took over in 2016, in that there’s a new cycle of players coming through. Allister Coetzee did have some bad luck, such as the injury to Handré Pollard and then the one to Patrick Lambie that left him with two rookies at halfback from his second game onwards, but change arguably happened too quickly.
Ironically, it was SA’s first home loss to Ireland that set the tone for Coetzee’s ill-fated tenure, and that is who the Boks will be starting with in 2024. Ireland are the one team the Boks haven’t beaten in the past few years, and in that sense there is unfinished business for the 2023 RWC winners.
Mindful that a World Cup preparation doesn’t mean you have to select your World Cup team four years ahead, the South Africans should start out the next cycle with two objectives — beat Ireland in the home series and win the Rugby Championship.
Start bleeding in the new players who will have to be relied on in 2027 around a settled, successful team rather than relive the 2016 experience when Faf de Klerk played his first international games alongside a flyhalf in Elton Jantjies who back then was only marginally more experienced at international level than he was.
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