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BOK WRAP: Dublin control a reflection of world champs’ hegemony

24 November 2025 04:55
By:Gavin Rich
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The Springboks © Getty Images

First up let’s remind people that the penultimate match of the Springboks’ November tour was not against Wales or Canada. Had that been the case, the disappointment reflected in the muted response from some South African fans and measured celebration by the management to a comprehensive victory might have been justified.

The game was in Dublin against a team that for a long time went unbeaten there and on Saturday suffered only the third defeat there in the last 26 games. That’s quite some record for Ireland on the ground that is their spiritual home, and no-one will need reminding that it is only at Eden Park in Auckland, where the Boks play only rarely, that the current world No 1 team hadn’t won in the past decade.

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It wasn’t a game that confirmed the evolution in their game that started against the same opponents in Pretoria last July, but it was one that confirmed their hegemony, meaning total control, of the world rugby order.

For Dublin saw them in control from start to finish, and the fact that Ireland took the eventual double digit losing margin as a sign of hope pretty much summed it up. The Boks have made some big statements over the past few months, but this might have been the biggest of all.

CARLEY LET IRISH GET AWAY WITH CYNICAL IN SECOND HALF

It was a game made ugly by the number of cards given out and which unfortunately meant that once again the narrative was subverted. Instead of the line being only awe at the power of the Boks, which it should have been for they were brutal in exercising their physical dominance, the Irish media in particular bleated about the refereeing of England’s Matthew Carley.

But I would have to agree with former Bok coach Nick Mallett, who in his role as SuperSport analyst during the game and then on the Talking Boks Youtube podcast the following day, said that Carley’s real blemish was how he reffed the second half. Clearly under pressure after the first-half shower of cards and the reaction of the Irish crowd, Carley let the home team get away with a lot in the second half in their attempts to limit damage and stop the Boks from scoring the killer blow that threatened for the entire third quarter and beyond.

Ireland coach Andy Farrell was right to laud his team for their guts and tenacity. But by the letter of the law there should have been more sanction against Ireland in the second half for the way they kept infringing in the red zone as the Boks pressed. It was his turning a blind eye to repeated cynical infringements that allowed Ireland to keep the eventual margin to just 11 points.

Yet there’s the word - ‘just’. 11 points was beyond most predictions on how much the Boks would win by. I had them winning by 8 in the supersport.com preview, although admittedly that is usually code for saying it will be by more than a converted try.

There are people making out that the margin indicates the game was close. That’s baloney. 11 points is a big margin in a test match between two top nations and if anything this was the big game in both the Autumn Internationals and indeed since the Boks started their winning run post Auckland in early September where their control of the game was most complete over 80 minutes.

SA CAN STILL WIN THE OLD WAY

Who really thought after the Boks took physical control early that Ireland had a chance of winning? Yes, the Boks made heavy weather of getting points on the board, particularly during the periods where they had an advantage in numbers, but they did score four tries to one. In Dublin.

They did completely dominate the scrums from the off, and the Ireland lineout was falling short early doors. It was the Boks returning to their old suffocation template, and they did it well, thus underlining that there are many gears they can shift through and games they can engage. They have more than one way to win now, and can also still win the old way.

Maybe the memory of how the Irish beat them up physically, a rare feeling for the Boks, in the first half of the Durban test last July played a role in the South Africans maybe overdoing the scrumming and the physical statement. There were 20 scrums in the game, which must be close to some sort of record, with the Boks repeatedly opting to scrum penalties.

When it was clear Carley wasn’t going to reward them like he did in the first half, perhaps they should have gone for a few three pointers instead, and created more scoreboard pressure on Ireland by drawing further ahead on the scoreboard. They wouldn’t have been able to opt for damage limitation then and would have had to commit more to chasing the game.

And then the 30 or 40 point margin that the Bok forward dominance and territorial supremacy merited would have materialised. There really was that kind of gap between the teams on the day and the fact that Farrell afterwards said he was proud after his team lost by 11 points sums it up. Ireland did well by losing by only 11.

That’s a reflection of the current world rugby order, the balance of power, and Farrell may have a point too in his search for a positive angle - it is the closest any team has come on this tour to the Boks. The margin was 15 or more in all the other games, and in two of those the Boks were down to 14 men for a significant part of it and sometimes 13.

COMPLETE CONTROL THROUGHOUT THE GAME

What the Boks had at the Aviva Stadium was something they didn’t have in Wellington, when they beat New Zealand by a record 33 point margin, or even in Durban in the next game against Argentina, where they won by 37. Complete control from start to finish.

And it was that control of the game that meant that while Bok coach Rassie Erasmus said his team wasn’t at its best, best illustrated what is now a fact - the Boks are, as the respected Ireland scribe Peter O’Reilly put it in the UK newspaper The Sunday Times, “the Springboks are now head and shoulders the best team in world rugby.”

He called it a “mullering” and he was right, and he was also right when he said the game would redefine the rivalry between the team’s going forward.

Indeed, it is now Ireland who are chasing. It is the whole world that is chasing. The Boks have one game to go, the out of international window game against Wales, but that is not needed by the Boks when it comes to making the statement they set out to make.

They will end unbeaten, with France and Ireland among their victims, with the only other team unbeaten over this sequence being England. They of course were playing at home, and only just scraped to victory against Argentina on Sunday.

Weekend International results

Italy 34 Chile 19

France 48 Australia 33

Ireland 13 South Africa 24

Spain 33 Fiji 41

Portugal 33 Canada 27

Wales 26 New Zealand 52

Romania 21 Uruguay 31

Georgia 23 Japan 25

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