Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2021 i SA RUGBY

The buildup to the Springboks’ series against the British & Irish Lions has been extraordinary, to say the least. As fate would have it, on the day the Lions were preparing to board their flight to South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa moved the country to Alert Level 4 in response to the third wave of the pandemic. With Gauteng as the epicentre, quick consideration had to be given to moving more matches to Cape Town, which was originally set to host three of the Lions’ games, against South Africa ‘A’, the Stormers and the Springboks in the first Test. It all added another chapter to the multi-faceted backstory of this tour before a ball had even been booted into play. And at a time of so much uncertainty, just the…

Lions! Lions! Lions! Whether you love or hate that noise of thousands of British & Lions fans flooding our rugby stadiums across South Africa and supporting the famous touring team, I can guarantee you one thing... you will miss it this year. Having said that, there will still be many fascinating facets to this tour, and I cannot wait until Warren Gatland shows his hand and unveils the Test team to take on the Boks. We have already seen the havoc injuries can cause in tours like these, with experienced captain Alun Wyn Jones ruled out just seven minutes into the warm-up game against Japan, closely followed by his Welsh and Ospreys teammate, Justin Tipuric. Throw in the drama of Covid-19 cases daily and we should be in for an…

PERCY MONTGOMERY Springbok No: 651 Born: 15 March 1974 School: SACS Tests:102 Tires: 25 Points: 893 Montgomery made his Test debut on 28 June 1997 against the British & Irish Lions at Kings Park in Durban. Though he started his first six Tests at outside centre, he would soon solidify himself as one of the great Test fullbacks. He would go on to play 102 times for South Africa and is the leading Springbok point-scorer with 893 points, including 25 tries. After being recalled to the Springbok set-up in 2004 by Jake White, Montgomery’s greatest moment came in 2007 when he booted South Africa to victory in the Rugby World Cup with four penalties against England in the final. MORNE STEYN Springbok No: 803 Bom: 11 July 1984 School: Sand…

If you’ve missed watching the Boks in action, prepare to have your green and gold rugby cup filled to overflowing. Two Tests against Georgia are done and dusted and now the I highly anticipated three-Test series against the British & Irish Lions is upon us. The Lions tour ends on 7 August and a week later the Boks head straight into their Rugby Championship return with the first battle against the Pumas. The Springboks will enjoy a brief reprieve for a month after they end the Rugby Championship with back-to-back clashes with the All Blacks on 25 September and 2 October. From November, the confirmed end-of-year Tests will have them facing Wales, Scotland and England. Domestically, a mid-year Currie Cup competition is well under way and then South Africa’s four…

Rassie Erasmus on the improved co-operation with overseas dubs: ‘When a player wants to go abroad and we can’t afford him but want him to stay in the Bok picture, we’ll have a good chat. If it’s a helpful club, has a good high-performance programme and they’re willing to work with us – like Munster or Sale or Toulouse – we’ll tell them it’s a good option and encourage them to go. ‘But there are clubs that are difficult to deal with and we’ll then tell a player if he wants to remain in Springbok consideration, he needs to have a rethink.’…

Bismarck du Plessis came off the bench in the second half of the European Challenge Cup final to make a series of game-changing hits and steals. Indeed, who could forget the turnover won by the former Springbok hooker in the closing stages that effectively clinched an 18-17 win for Montpellier. It should have been a moment to celebrate for Du Plessis and his teammates, who had endured a tough season on and off the field. What happened next, however, brought his six-year stint in France to a premature end and ultimately hastened his return to South Africa. When SA Rugby magazine contacted Du Plessis in the days after the final, he revealed that Montpellier were releasing as many as 14 players from their contracts. The news came as a shock…

In a tribute to Annelee Murray, former Springbok captain Jean de Villiers wrote that when he started his international career, he wondered who Annelee Murray was, but when he finished it 109 Tests and 111 Springbok matches later, he knew she was as important to the Springboks as the head coach, in terms of standing within the squad. De Villiers writes that Murray was the ‘go-to’ person on all things related to the Springboks outside the actual playing of the Test match, and it is a sentiment shared by those who captained the Springboks during Murray’s 20-year association with the team. Murray has two World Cup winner’s medals, but it is the countless memories that define her journey with South African rugby supporters’ favourite sons. She has experienced the good,…

The Springboks and the British & Irish Lions face an enormous mental challenge before the three-Test series in South Africa. The strain of living in a bio-bubble is likely to be felt as a long tour nears its conclusion. Competing in an empty stadium – bereft of fans and the energy that so often inspires game-winning feats – will demand yet another shift in mindset. When I think of a Lions tour, the hype and the energy around it springs to mind. I think of the fans – the locals and the travelling horde from the north. It’s fair to say that the 2021 tour to South Africa, which will be staged behind closed doors, will fail to live up to previous occasions in this particular respect. When I look…

When you added the Cheetahs and the Kings to the Pro14 in 2017, did you think the tournament would expand so quickly? It accelerated in 2017. We were open to the change because it was in our vision of what this could become. From 2017, the main challenge was to break down the barriers and look at what worked, as in from a time perspective, getting to South Africa and back, were there any player welfare issues to deal with? We quickly felt confident that it did work. It’s fair to say that coming out of a Covid environment accelerated the change because the South African teams stopped playing Super Rugby. We were open to further expansion and thankfully, the SA teams were too. This has very much been part…

Beast Mtawarira remembers every one of his 117 Tests for South Africa. According to the decorated prop, none was as brutal or intense as the second match against the British & Irish Lions in 2009. ‘In some ways, the Lions are tougher than the AU Blacks,’ Mtawarira tells SA Rugby magazine. That second Test at Loftus Versfeld was probably the most physical battle of my entire career. ‘Nothing compared to it, before or after. It’s the kind of contest where you need players with the physical and mental capacity to stand up.’ Back in 2009, the Boks had the likes of Bakkies Botha serving as the team’s enforcer. This time, Eben Etzebeth will fulfil the role of physical talisman. The lock has nothing left to prove. Having made his debut…

Becoming a Test Lion is a big driver for Dan Biggar, particularly after the disappointment of not being involved in the 2017 series. It’s one of his oft-stated goals, along with winning 100 caps. RWC 2023 has also moved back into the picture; post-Japan it looked like a World Cup too far, given the repeated time away from his family but Covid has changed his perspective and being part of that campaign in France has returned to view. Yet for all these targets, he is not weighed down by trying to achieve them – that comes back to the change in mindset. ‘I’ve not put any pressure on myself, I’m not chasing it. I’ll try to put everything into getting those goals but if it doesn’t happen I can look…

When Jacques Nienaber was announced as the Springboks’ head coach last year, his predecessor Rassie Erasmus all but admitted that in his capacity as SA Rugby director of rugby he had sort of turned the talent drain to overseas clubs into a strategy. The point of the plan of action was twofold: to let the United Kingdom, French and Japanese clubs pay the players the kind of money with which the South African market can’t compete, and to expose them to different coaching methods which might help develop them. THE CONCERNING THIN6 IS HOW MANY PLAYERS LEFT AS BROKEN MEN IN THE DOMESTIC GAME AND RETURNED AS ALL-EONOUERING HEROES AT INTERNATIONAL LEVEL To overly simplify it, the overseas clubs are – in a way – paying to improve our players.…

United Rugby Championship CEO Martin Anayi on the expectations of South Africa’s teams: ‘The main thing is for these teams to able to challenge at the top end. Our tournament has been strong previously – other than the couple of years when the Irish teams have dominated – when we have had different winners: Glasgow won the title, Scarlets from Wales won it. That’s what we want to get back to. We want to get back to that jeopardy, where a different team can win on each weekend. ‘The Irish teams have been so strong, in our competition and in the Champions Cup. The challenge that I am so glad the South African teams are rising to is they want to come and win. In a sense, it doesn’t really…

VS DYLAN JACK SAYS THE SPRINGBOKS The general assertion before this series seems to be that the British & Irish Lions, with players who have enjoyed more international game time over the past couple of years compared to the Boks, will clinch the series. I don’t think it’s that simple. Granted, the Springboks have not played as a team since the 2019 World Cup final. However, the 2021 Lions have never played together as a unit and will have to gel quickly from their pre-tour warm-up against Japan. The Springbok squad that won the World Cup in 2019 is pretty much intact, bar the retirement of Tendai Mtawarira, Francois Louw and Schalk Brits. Lood de Jager and Duane Vermeulen are working their way back from injuries, but if they manage…

ANDRE-HUGO VENTER ‘Thankful for the opportunity! On to next week!’ exclaimed the Maties and Junior Springbok hooker, alongside front-row partner Frans Malherbe, after making his Stormers debut in the Rainbow Cup SA. VINCENT KOCH ‘What a special day, 1st father’s day, playing my 100th and doing all this with my best friends! #webackbaby,’ grinned the Springbok prop, with his wife and son, after Saracens won promotion back into the English top flight. DEWALDT DUVENAGE ‘Season 2020/2021. Rainbow Cup champions!’ said the Benetton captain, with Italian flyhalf Paulo Garbisi, after beating the Bulls in the final in Treviso. CHESLIN KOLBE ‘Twice champions of France with the president and my princess,’ trumpeted the Springbok wing, after winning another Top14 title, with Toulouse teammate Rynhardt Elstadt. WILCO LOUW ‘Gallagher Premiership CHAMPIONS! #Harlequins2021,’ declared…

There is no shortage of iconic players who have donned the famous red jersey of the British & Irish Lions pride. To select a greatest XV is an almost impossible task, but it should stir plenty of debate. Our Rugby World magazine colleagues put their heads together and finally settled on this list: 15 – JPR WILLIAMS Wales, 8 Lions caps 1971-74 It takes a special performer to become identifiable by three initials, but it was far more than ‘JPR’ that canonised this fullback into the legend of Welsh and Lions rugby. A full-blooded approach, allied to flowing hair and prominent sideburns, made the surgeon an unmistakable figure on the field, and he played 29 games for the Lions, starting 27 of them, on the tours of the early 1970s.…

When Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber named their Springbok squad to contest the British & Irish Lions Series there was perhaps no greater surprise than to see as many as five players picked from English club Sale Sharks. Sale, a team which had not been the champions of the Premiership in 15 years, have contributed as many players to the Springbok cause as South Africa’s Bulls and Lions combined. Considering Wandisile Simelane was the sole representative from the Johannesburg-based side, Sale have comparatively provided five times as many Boks for the upcoming series. By all accounts, Sale are a statistical aberration, a defiance of rugby convention. Often derided as being a destination for South African mercenaries, the truth is more complex. To understand how Lood de Jager, Faf de Klerk,…

If the British & Irish Lions taught South African rugby anything during the past five decades, it is the value of a formidable flyhalf. One of the remarkable threads that runs through their tours to South Africa is how the form of the home flyhalves has set the tone. The Springboks’ periods of dominance have coincided with them having match-winners in the No 10 jersey, but equally, when they have wobbled, it’s most often because the flyhalf has not taken charge. The tour of 1974 is a good place to start, chiefly because this was a monumental watershed for the South African game. The horrors experienced by the team shook up local rugby. ‘The price of a Springbok skin … who wants a goat’s head above his mantlepiece?’ asked L’Equipe…

Of course, everybody’s focus is on the Lions series and how the Springboks will match up. However, in reality the series forms a small part of the Boks’ Test calendar for 2021, with the Rugby Championship and end-of-year tour to Europe still to come. The Springboks are scheduled to play 14 Test matches in the space of five months. This means depth will be all-important this year. It’s one of the big reasons behind Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber deciding to combine the Springbok and SA ‘A’ teams into an expanded squad of 46 players, allowing the newcomers to adjust to the Boks’ systems and strategies. Thinking logically, it would be unreasonable to expect first-choice players like Cheslin Kolbe, Damian de Allende and Faf de Klerk to start in every…