David Kriel is a wonderfully talented player. It is not a case of if he plays for the Springboks, but rather when. He was the Bulls’ saviour with a last-minute conversion to beat Benetton.
Away wins are more platinum than gold in the United Rugby Championship (URC), and the Bulls and Lions earned invaluable league points up north over the past fortnight.
The Bulls, beaten by a point in a controversial finish in Wales a week ago, refused to accept coming second for a successive match, and the combination of Akker van der Merwe’s 79th minute try and Kriel’s clutch conversion proved the decisive play of the match.
Jake White’s Bulls have been outstanding in the opening month of the URC, with two home wins and two from three on tour. For now it is job done.
The URC, as a league, is complicated because of its stop-start nature and how it must accommodate the international season window and the Champions Cup. It is not a league in which a team can get on a roll, build momentum and then push for play-off glory. The disruption in the league requires a very different mindset from coaches.
Crucial to the longer-term season campaign is early wins in the first month. It can’t be overstated that the URC is a marathon, with teams having to play 21 matches to make it to the final. It’s a league that starts in September and finishes in June.
In between, there’s Test rugby, enforced national squad player resting and the inevitable injury curse. It is helluva tough, but the South African quartet — into year four of the league — are showing their adaptability to different playing conditions, playing surfaces and coming to terms with the travel component that, for now, still has them flying to the UK and Europe via Doha.
Erasmus has used 49 players in 10 Test matches, but it is a core group of 35 that won him the Rugby Championship title, and it is the same players who should win him all three Tests in November
The match officiating remains inconsistent and referee interpretation is a lottery for players and coaches. But the maturity of the South African teams is that they have largely been able to adapt to the specifics of a match official.
The scrum is a South African rugby strengt at international level and in the URC. South African teams all have power scrums and particularly impressive front rowers.
Wilco Louw, as one example, is a tighthead prop who would be an automatic selection for most Test teams, but he has only just been added to Rassie Eramsus’ Bok squad of the November internationals.
The abundance of front-row talent available to Erasmus is evidence that Louw is ranked closer to five in the country than one, although a case can be made that he should always have been in the Bok mix.
Louw can scrum, and the Bulls — with him the anchor — have destroyed opposition packs at the set-piece. The Bulls scrum, when Louw plays, operates on a different power level.
The scrum will be influential for the Boks in their Test matches against Scotland, England and Wales. Erasmus’ selections, and the absolute trust in those players who won back-to-back World Cups, is a statement that the Boks won’t revert from a set piece formula that currently has no equal in Test rugby.
Erasmus will not use the November internationals for player development. That may come at home in the 2025 June internationals, but realistically there are only a handful of players pushing for Test opportunities outside the existing group.
Kriel is one of them, and so is his Bulls teammate Cameron Hanekom, whose versatility could see him play at No 6, 7 and 8. Hanekom qualifies through ancestry for Wales, but it would be a shock if he opted for anything but the route to that sought-after Springboks jersey.
Erasmus, in the 2024 season, has used 49 players in 10 Test matches, but it is a core group of 35 that won him the Rugby Championship title, and it is the same players who should win him all three Tests in November.
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