The Springboks’ success in a truncated Rugby Championship may hinge on their performance against the All Blacks in Auckland, and the team’s progress at the World Cup in France will be shaped by the result against Ireland in the pool stages. With that in mind, it would be fair to assume that these are the biggest fixtures on the Boks’ 2023 Test calendar.

The Bok coaches, however, insist there are two other fixtures that will set the tone for the most important season in the four-year cycle. Victories against Australia in the Rugby Championship opener on 8 July and Scotland in the first World Cup pool match on 10 September could place the Boks on the front foot in both tournaments. Conversely, losses in these fixtures could send the team into a downward spiral.

Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber held court at a media briefing this week and provided insight into their plans for the upcoming Rugby Championship as well as the subsequent world title defence. Over the next few weeks, the coaches will assess the fitness of the players returning from their respective clubs.

The team will begin to train for specific opponents and referees they will encounter over the course of a season that may – should they progress all the way to the final on 29 October – span 13 matches. The coaching duo has confirmed that the split-squad policy that proved so effective in 2019 may be revisited in order to cope with logistical and game-management challenges.

Split-squad policy revisited

Four years ago, Erasmus took a calculated gamble when he sent 15 of his best players to New Zealand to prepare for the Boks’ second fixture of the tournament against the All Blacks. The rest of the squad remained in South Africa to prepare for the Rugby Championship opener against Australia.

The gamble paid off when the second-string side claimed a 35-17 bonus-point win against the Wallabies. A week later, the “A” team did enough to secure a draw against the All Blacks.

The Boks went into the last fixture against Argentina with a chance of winning the southern hemisphere showpiece. In the end, they won that match by an emphatic 46-13 margin, and secured their first Rugby Championship title in 10 years.

More importantly, they carried that momentum through to the subsequent World Cup campaign. Even after losing to the All Blacks in the tournament opener, they backed themselves to bounce back and qualify for the playoffs. From there, they knocked over Japan, Wales and England and lifted the Webb Ellis Cup. Immediately after that final, Erasmus admitted that the journey to glory began with a Rugby Championship win against Australia.

Will history repeat itself in 2023? This time, the coaches will hope for an improvement in the shape of an unbeaten Rugby Championship campaign, and a successful run through the friendlies against Wales and New Zealand. A morale-boosting win against Ireland – the No 1 team in the world – would set them on course to top their World Cup pool and peak in the playoffs. 

Not getting ahead of themselves

And yet, as Erasmus suggested at the briefing, the Boks can’t afford to get ahead of themselves. In terms of the World Cup, they can’t afford to think further than the opening game against a potentially dangerous Scotland side.

“Look at what happened in 2019, where we lost in our first pool game against New Zealand,” the director of rugby said. “It’s really about winning that one big match and, for us, Scotland is a really big game.

“If we beat Scotland, suddenly we have more breathing room. At the end of the day you want to finish in the top two in the pool and advance to the quarterfinals, but you don’t know how that other group [Pool A] is going to pan out, and whether you will play New Zealand or France. That is up to destiny to decide. What we must ensure is that we win that first game against Scotland.

“Everyone is talking about Ireland, but Scotland will ask why no one is talking about them. It’s not just about winning and setting the tone; it’s about paving the way for the quarterfinals. If we lose that game, of course, we will be under so much more pressure to beat Ireland later in the pool phase.” 

Australia game a potential banana peel

Looking at the season as a whole, the Boks need to ensure they begin with a win against Australia, possibly with a second-string side. Injuries may scupper a few of their best-laid plans, but as things stand, the Boks are better stocked in most positions than they were four years ago. They should be favourites against an Australia team that has never won a Test at Loftus Versfeld.

But as was the case in 2019, there will be no room for complacency when the two teams line up on 8 July. New Wallabies coach Eddie Jones was part of the Bok management team when they won the 2007 World Cup, and is all too familiar with South Africa’s strengths and weaknesses. If Jones orchestrates an upset it could have dire consequences for the Boks’ season.

In that worst-case scenario, the Boks will head into the next game in Auckland needing a victory to keep their Rugby Championship title hopes alive. If they lose two on the trot, they may struggle to recover, and may go into the final warmup against the All Blacks at Twickenham needing a big scalp to lift their spirits before the tournament proper.

If they fail to achieve that, they may head into the first World Cup pool without the necessary momentum and belief. Scotland boast several world-class players and have beaten some of the best teams in the world over the past few years. If they produced one of their giant-slaying displays against the Boks in Marseille, it would leave the South Africans scrambling for a campaign-saving win against Ireland – a team they haven’t beaten since 2016.

Erasmus is not downplaying the threats of the All Blacks and Ireland when he says that the Boks’ fixtures against Australia and Scotland are priorities. If the Boks don’t hit the ground running in the Rugby Championship, and if they fail to bring their World Cup title defence with a bang, they may finish the season as also-rans rather than winners. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.