We will have to wait until later this week to know what test the Barbarians will offer the Springboks on Saturday but the SA choice of a first opponent for the international season is far more sensible than the one made by the British & Irish Lions.
Japan was a good choice for a Lions warm-up game before their tour to SA four years ago. Japan had made the quarterfinal stage of their own World Cup two years before that, but they were never going to beat the Home Union composite team.
Argentina are a different story and it is hard to understand the logic of playing a warm-up game against opponents that are ranked higher than the team the Lions will play against in the Test series. Not only are the Pumas ahead of the Wallabies in the World Rugby rankings, they have also finished ahead of them in the last few editions of the Rugby Championship.
They thrashed the Aussies 67-27 not that long ago to confirm their superiority. So given it is the Wallabies the Lions will be facing, the narrow defeat suffered by the Lions in Dublin on Friday night should not be seen as a train smash. The Lions were not completely on point with coach Andy Farrell’s attacking game, but it was the first time the team had played together.
There is always a sharp improvement curve in Lions performances in the first three weeks of the tour building up to the first Test, and given that they nearly beat the Pumas, who the rankings suggest are better than Australia, in their first game together, the angst of the UK and Irish rugby media over the defeat is misplaced.
What they should really be doing is ask why the Lions felt it was necessary to open against such a strong opponent. The Lions have played a warm-up game against the Pumas before. That was in 2005, when they drew in Cardiff. The Lions went on to be thrashed 3-0 in New Zealand so the portents after the Dublin defeat aren’t good.
The headlines that followed the Lions’ Dublin defeat spun the narrative that they had been “stunned” by the Pumas. Hardly.
Except the Lions aren’t playing the All Blacks, but an Australian team ranked eighth in the world. If the Lions apply the same logic of warming up against a team stronger than their series opponents when they head to New Zealand in 2029 they would have to play the Springboks. Which obviously would be silly. Beating the Boks is an achievement on par with beating the All Blacks for the Lions.
The headlines that followed the Lions’ Dublin defeat spun the narrative that they had been “stunned” by the Pumas. Hardly. Anyone who thinks that hasn’t been paying attention to the current world order, and neither were the bookies who gave the Pumas a 17-point start.
If anything, by starting out against the Barbarians in an age in which players aren’t as available for festival type games as they might have been in the past, the Boks are risking the opposite to what the Lions experienced. Their opponents might be too weak.
But the low-key start to the 2025 international season, which also features games against Italy and Georgia, is fit for purpose for Bok coach Rassie Erasmus given that this middle year between World Cups will require even more spreading of the selection net and experimentation than last year.
In 2024 the Boks started out against Ireland, which demanded Erasmus stick with his World Cup team, but this time around we are unlikely to see a full strength team take the field until Australia come here in August.
If indeed Erasmus even does it then. With so many of the established Boks approaching that point in their career when at any time they can plunge over the cliff to being too old, there’s profit to be had from stretching the period of experimentation for as long as the Bok coach can.
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