The Springboks are in Cardiff this week and the whole mood around Saturday’s game against Wales can be seen as a measure of just how much has changed for both teams over a period of time.
I was in a queue to the train in the Cardiff Station adjacent to the Principality Stadium after the Boks lost by 20 points in what was the final game of Allister Coetzee’s first season in charge and couldn’t believe what I was hearing from some of the Welsh people around me. They were lamenting the fact that their side had not won by more against a team they considered poor and just not up to it.
This from a nation that before 1999 had never registered a win against SA. Coetzee somehow managed to retain his job for another year, but he looked like a dead man walking in Cardiff that week. The previous weekend his team had suffered their first ever loss to Italy.
Now it is likely to be Wales coach Warren Gatland who will be the dead man walking, although note this is being written before last night’s match between Wales and Australia. Even a win over the Wallabies will not change the narrative though — the Boks will be overwhelming favourites, even if they play their second string team.
How much the pendulum has swung in the eight years since that 2016 tour was summed up by the Bok reaction to the win over England at the weekend. When Andrew Brace blew the final whistle to confirm a 29-20 win for the world champions, there was no jubilation from the players, and when the television cameras panned to the coaching dug-out, there was no fist pumping there either. Instead, just earnest conversation.
The Boks of 2024 set high standards for themselves, which is a good thing as it means they are aiming high. They head to Cardiff with a record from this first post-World Cup year that reads played 12, won 10. That’s a great record, particularly if you consider coach Rassie Erasmus’ focus on building depth meant that when Wilco Louw took the field at Twickenham he was the 50th different player used this year.
That’s a phenomenal amount and indicative of the depth that is being built in the buildup to the next World Cup in 2027, and yet the Boks are winning. In London it appeared from their reaction after the game that winning is becoming such a habit for them that is becoming an accepted outcome.
Erasmus made sure he didn’t insult anyone by saying he was not satisfied, because after all his team had just beaten England on their home ground by nine points, but it was clear he was far from as content as he said he was.
And it has been thus quite often this year. After the magnificent comeback against the All Blacks in Joburg, much of the post-match focus was on what went wrong for the Boks before they started their fightback. It was clear they weren’t completely satisfied then, and neither were they after Ireland fought back to lose by just a score in the first Test of that series in Pretoria.
They weren’t that flush for much of the match when they won against the All Blacks in Cape Town either, and while two comfortable wins were scored in Australia with experimental teams, it can be argued that the only performance the Boks have been completely happy with this year was the one that buried Argentina in Nelspruit to clinch the Rugby Championship.
Perhaps it was because they wanted to reprise that performance in front of the global audience that always applies to a Twickenham game, thus growing the Bok brand in the way Erasmus and SA Rugby CEO Rian Oberholzer alluded to in the UK media ahead of the Scotland game, that the celebrations after the England game were so muted.
They do want more. And yet they scored four tries to two against an England team that arguably produced its most resilient and committed performance of the November series and was desperate to bounce back from the public condemnation that followed the loss to Australia.
The Boks know how to find a way to win and they did so again in London. It is becoming so customary for them that getting out of any hole they find themselves in is expected.
Do office workers pump their fists and celebrate at the end of a working day? They may do so occasionally, but only after something significant has been achieved, such as a target being reached. That’s the Boks — winning is another day at the office for them and it is the near perfection of the Nelspruit win that they aspire to.
England are in the diametrically opposite position. An ugly win against a top team would be more than enough for them right now. And Wales too. A lot of water has flown under the bridge since I stood in that queue in Cardiff eight years ago, and it has flowed in a positive direction for SA rugby.
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