Rassie Erasmus, on winning the 2019 Rugby World Cup, said legacy and greatness were measured in consistency and not one-off titles. His back-to-back World Cup champions have delivered post Covid.
Erasmus’s team is a win away from becoming the first Springboks to defend the Tri Nations/Castle Rugby Championship title since its inception in 1996.
New Zealand’s All Blacks have dominated the competition, winning titles on the bounce, going unbeaten, having the best away record and an enviable home record since their first success in 1996.
The Boks and Australia have been supporting acts, except for a handful of titles and, Argentina, late arrivals in the last decade with the expansion from three to four teams, have improved but never threatened to win the competition.
Respect and reverence to what the All Blacks have achieved, but in the past three seasons the Springboks, World Cup winners in 2019 and 2023, have started to reproduce the very best returns of the All Blacks and find consistency in beating the best at home and in their own backyard.
Erasmus’s Boks, not discounting when they were Jacques Nienaber’s Boks and Erasmus’s role was that of national director of rugby, have won 44 of 60 Test matches played at 24 venues since their first Test match post Covid in 2021, which was against Georgia in Pretoria.
The Boks won 40-9 and the second Test was called off because players from both sides were Covid positive. When the Boks lined up against the British & Irish Lions for the three-Test series opener in Cape Town, the hosts had played one Test since winning the World Cup in 2019, which was the Georgia hit-out.
The Lions players, for England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales respectively, had enjoyed the Six Nations and Nations Cup tournaments and played five tour matches. It remains the most remarkable result that the Boks won the series two-one, after losing the first Test.
So much of Boks’ history is celebrated for an ability to shock and defy the odds when considered underdogs, but these champions of the world have never been underdogs since their 32-12 World Cup win against England in Japan in 2019.
Erasmus and Nienaber won the Lions series in 2021 and the World Cup in 2023. They did it the hard way at home versus the Lions in 2021 and they faced the greatest challenge in beating hosts France (quarter-finals), England (semi-finals) and New Zealand (final) to win a record fourth World Cup.
In between this they beat the All Blacks in Australia, at Twickenham in England and in Paris, France. Once the World Cup was won, they beat the All Blacks in Johannesburg and Cape Town and Wellington, New Zealand.
The Boks have beaten the All Blacks in five of their last six Tests. That is a big statistic.
The Boks have won back-to-back Tests against the All Blacks in South Africa and consecutive Tests against the Wallabies in Australia. They have beaten every nation in the past two seasons, including Ireland in Pretoria.
They have won and retained the Freedom Cup (v New Zealand) and Nelson Mandela Plate (v Australia) and downed old foe England twice in succession at the Allianz Stadium in Twickenham.
Historically, pre-Erasmus and Nienaber’s arrival at the Boks in 2018, South Africa won 61 percent of their Tests. Since 2021, the Boks have won 73 percent of their Tests and that percentage has further increased with 28 wins from 34, alternatively 31 wins from their 37 most recent Tests, for an 84 percent return.
That puts them right up there with the magnificent All Blacks vintage from 2011 to 2015, that won back-to-back World Cup titles, won the Rugby Championship on the bounce, won the Bledisloe Cup every year, won the Grand Slam in beating all four home unions, won in South Africa and won in France for a 89 percent winning return.
The Boks must beat Argentina to win the Rugby Championship at Twickenham on Saturday. There is no need for a try-scoring bonus point. The pressure, some would say, is big because of expectation, but the Boks player mentality under Erasmus thrives on expectation.
So much of Boks’ history is celebrated for an ability to shock and defy the odds when considered underdogs, but these champions of the world have never been underdogs since their 32-12 World Cup win against England in Japan in 2019.
The fanatical South African rugby public expects them to win because of the quality of the coaches and players.
Nothing changes on Saturday.
The expectation matches the belief that Siya Kolisi’s Rainbow Warriors sit atop with the very best to have ever played the game.
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