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STRIKING IT RICH: Magnificent Proteas and Man U falling to a Bok trick

football27 November 2025 07:28
By:Gavin Rich
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Tadej Pogacar © Getty Images

HOW TO ENSURE YOU PLAY WITH 14

So in among all the song and dance around another card extravaganza, it seems we forgot an important point about what happened in Dublin last week - the Springboks played most of the game with 15 men, and this time it was their opponents who were mostly down on numbers.

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And while the South Africans physically smashed Ireland into oblivion, and were never in danger of losing as they returned to their suffocation tactics of old, you somehow got the feeling they felt they’d left a bit out there in terms of what should have been the winning margin. It was certainly a feeling adrift among Bok fans where I watched the game, and it wasn’t the case the two previous weeks, where the Boks maximised their opportunities - while down to 14 men.

Instead it was Ireland, because they were carded so liberally, and let it be said also correctly, by referee Matthew Carley, who managed to use the fact they were down on numbers to boost themselves. Not in the same way as the Boks, who won when down to 14 and also remember their red cards in Paris and Turin were permanent reds, but to spare their blushes, to deflect from the humiliation, to find the space to insert the word pride into the post-match narrative.

So what can the Boks do if a day arrives when they realise that being down to 14-men is actually helpful rather than detrimental to their chances?

An idea was sprung when watching Manchester United lose to Everton at Old Trafford in the Premier League on Monday night. In fact, given how delighted the Everton manager David Moyes was that his team was down to 10 men for most of the game, and the way he sugar-coated the way that came about, I half wondered if the Scotsman had taken an idea from watching the Boks.

To inform those who didn’t watch the game or have no interest in soccer, Everton’s Idrissa Gueye was red carded after 13 minutes - for slapping his teammate Michael Keane. It isn’t unprecedented for something like this to happen in that sport, and there are Youtube videos that have been posted since the game as a reminder.

But it was bizarre, and the one thing I couldn’t understand was why both players weren’t sent off. For it was clear that Gueye was reacting to Keane, who was incensed at an error that Gueye had made, shoving him and being in his face. Maybe then Moyes wouldn’t have been quite so full of forgiveness afterwards. He said the incident showed his players cared, they cared for their performance and their team.

Which is something Rassie could easily get away with if two of his players square up in an attempt to get the Boks down to 14-men one day in the future. Of course rugby being rugby, and rugby players being the physical monsters they are, there could be the risk of more physical damage to the other player than there is in soccer…

A BOOKING SYSTEM MIGHT SAVE THE NARRATIVE DISTORTION

While on the subject of soccer, the system in that sport, where a yellow card doesn’t mean you leave the field in that particular game but an accumulation of them leads to suspension and missing games further down the road, might be a better solution to eradicating negative play than sending players for 10 minutes to the sin-bin.

Apart from feeling that rugby should always be 15 against 15 except in exceptional circumstances, what irritates is the way they distort the narrative afterwards. Like happened after the Aviva Stadium game, where every Irishman and his dog was focusing on Carley, who was only doing his job, rather than the good Bok performance. And like after the last World Cup final, where New Zealanders focused on the sending off of Sam Cane rather than accept that they were second best on the night.

There are so many instances over the past decade or so where there’s been this distortion that they are impossible to list. I also do get the misgivings of people who feel it is wrong for a prop to be penalised and then, after multiple infringements, be carded because he is inferior to his opponent. In what other sport do you get tactics built around getting an opposing player removed from the field, like I think was the case with the Boks at the end of the first half in Dublin?

There is an obvious need to card players in addition to awarding penalties against them as teams, like the All Blacks used to under Richie McCaw and the Irish did this past Saturday, can make a habit of producing cynical infringements in the red zone to prevent opponents from scoring.

Indeed, one of the reasons the Boks didn’t kick on and score more points in their third quarter of complete dominance in Dublin was because Carley was clearly under pressure not to issue any more cards. And Ireland knew that. They got away with murder in the second half.

But if a card copped a financial sanction against both a player and a team wouldn’t that be enough of a deterrent? Particularly if an accumulation of cards, say three, could then lead to that player being suspended for a set number of games. It doesn’t ruin the game in question, or the optic of the game, unless you get two yellows and that should be automatic red, but there is still enough of a deterrent.

SA’s SPORTING CUP IS RUNNING OVER

The Boks are not the only national team South Africa should be immensely proud of. Bafana have of course made the FIFA World Cup finals for the first time in a while, and as a lover of the longest format of the sport, it was impossible for me to draw myself away from the five days of the second cricket test between the Proteas and India in Guwahati.

In fact, it was cricket overload, for I also watched almost all of the two days of the Ashes test in Perth, with the only time my eyes went away from that bizarre game being when I checked up on how the Proteas were fairing.

Thankfully England’s tame capitulation on the second day and Travis Head’s knock for the ages to win it for Australia meant that the overlap between the two games was just for one day - the first day in Guwahati coincided with the second day at the Optus Stadium.

I have a soft spot for England as SA plays so little test cricket, whereas for them it is the opposite. There’s almost too much of it, but it does make them a good team to follow. So I shouldn’t have been pleased that England capitulated like they did, for before this series I really wanted them to win it.

But the levels they take their Bazball approach to are, frankly, so brainless that it was impossible not to feel that a big wake-up call was necessary in Perth. Plus England captain Ben Stokes’ defence of his team’s poor preparations by calling critics like the legendary Ian Botham ‘has beens’ didn’t sit well with me. Botham had the wood over the Aussies in a way Stokes, who is one of my favourite sportsmen, hasn’t.

But as a South African there was no limit to the delight I felt watching them grind down India in the first innings before Marco Jansen destroyed them with the ball in their first chance at batting. There have been some square turners in India over the past decade, but this pitch wasn’t one of those - it was the perfect test pitch in the sense that it did deteriorate later in the game. Which should be the case.

South Africa’s depth when it comes to spin bowling has been coming on for a while now, and the SA spinners, particularly man of the series Simon Harmer, out-bowled India. Having lost three tests to New Zealand 12 months ago surely the message to the hosts is that the amount of time some overseas players are spending on the sub-continent has taken away the advantage India’s spinners used to give them at home.

Coming to think of it, the development of depth in India’s seam bowling means it is also working the other way around. India have yet to win a test series in this country, but it is no longer wise when they do come here for the Proteas to order the groundsmen to prepare spicy, seam-friendly tracks. We learnt that when they bowled South Africa out for 55 at Newlands last January.

WE NEED TO PLAY MORE TESTS

The one negative of watching Marco Jansen end the second test with his spectacular catch was that it was the last act we’d see from the national team in red ball cricket for the next 10 months. Australia are due here next September/October for a three test series that will be massive for the role it will play in determining who contests the next World Test Championship final, but unfortunately SA will not play any test matches until then.

For me it shouldn’t be a three test series either, it should be a four test series at minimum, and so too the visit by England that will follow from December 2026 and into January 2027. Three test series don’t cut it when strong teams are playing each other (two games is enough when you are playing Bangladesh), and neither do two test series, although Temba Bavuma’s team winning the second game in India was extra pleasing in the sense that it meant that had it been a three game rubber, the Proteas would still have won it.

I am not sure who Australia are playing between now and next September but they might well arrive here more battle hardened, and of course England, as mentioned earlier, play a lot of test cricket.

I know economic considerations rule, but test cricket is the pinnacle of the sport, and the fact that the Proteas play the format they are best at, and their administration sometimes appear to downgrade it, as shown by last year’s effectively forfeited away series in New Zealand, is galling. As indeed it is galling that there will be no Newlands test to attend this summer.

A CHALLENGE TO THE BIG THREE

What made the Proteas win over India all the sweeter, and indeed the drawn series in Pakistan before that, was the memory of what was said in the buildup to the Lord’s WTC final in mid-year. Remember all the talk about how the South Africans hadn’t played anyone?

Well, it was true, though through no fault of their own, of that WTC cycle. But that has changed. They’ve now beaten Australia at a neutral venue, won one test of two in Pakistan, where very few visiting teams win (ask England), and now they’ve crushed India on their own turf.

Crushing India is particularly pleasing given the way that country appears to dominate the running of the game, and the Proteas’ recent test successes have challenged the perception that the ring-fencing of the so-called big three (India, Australia and England) is justified.

I’d back the Proteas to beat all three of those in a series right now, and if England tried Bazball against a full strength Proteas attack, with Kagiso Rabada back, they might find themselves even more embarrassed than they were in Perth.

Actually, it was the Proteas who inflicted the first defeat on England in the Bazball area, the last time they were in England. The hosts eventually came back to win the series, but England batted for almost as few overs across their two innings in their massive innings defeat in the Lord’s test as they did in Perth.

And that was at a very embryonic phase of SA’s development as a test team. If my memory is correct, Mark Boucher was still the coach, and much has changed since then as the players have become more experienced.

WALES GAME NOT GOOD FOR SA’S ECO-SYSTEM

The Boks have asserted themselves as world rugby’s dominant team, with the recent World Rugby Awards underlining that, as well as the selection of the World XV, that featured six South Africans.

However there are times when I feel the Bok’s are prioritised a bit too much at the expense of the local rugby eco-system, and Saturday’s game against Wales in Cardiff is an example of that. The game is being played outside of the international window, and there is a reason there is an international window. It is to protect the next level of the professional game, meaning the clubs/franchises who pay the bulk of the international players’ salaries.

To me Saturday night’s Vodacom URC game between Munster and the Stormers is a bigger event than the game in Cardiff earlier in the day. It is a top of the table clash, and with club/franchise rugby taking centre stage from now until June, the result could determine what the rugby narrative will be for several months to come.

The Stormers will be without Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Damian Willemse, Cobus Reinach, Ben-Jason Dixon, Ntuthuko Mchunu and Zachary Porthen, all of whom will be on duty for the Boks. Those first four mentioned names in particular would make a huge difference to the Stormers’ chances of winning at Thormond Park.

And ditto the Sharks’ absentees as they go this weekend to Galway for a game against Connacht that can rescue their so far disappointing season if they win it.

Some overseas media platforms have headlined the Cardiff game as “a nonsensical test” and I agree. Wales are particularly weak at the moment, and in this game they will be even weaker because they will be missing so many overseas based players because the game is happening outside the window.

I can understand out of window games at the start of the international season. The Boks have many Japan based players on their books, and they needed this season’s pipe-opener against the Barbarians, which was played outside the international window, to get those players up to speed. The previous year they played Wales at Twickenham and that was also very beneficial (it was Sacha’s debut game).

But playing Wales after an already hugely successful tour in a game which has a predictable result just doesn’t grab me and may be detrimental to the local franchises.

CONTEPOMI IS NO ANGEL

There were probably many South Africans who remember the Bongi Mbonabmi/Tom Curry ‘wit kant’ saga during the last World Cup that would automatically take Argentina coach Felipe Contepomi’s side in his bust up with the England flank following his team’s narrow defeat at Twickenham last weekend.

Contepomi told a media conference afterwards that Curry was a bully because the flanker had pushed him in the tunnel after he, Contempomi, had told him he had broken a Puma players knee in a late tackle towards the end of the game. The England flanker was penalised for hitting late, but not carded, and I thought it was one of the few correct calls in an otherwise poor refereeing performance.

But not in Contepomi’s view. The commentators told us about how incensed the Pumas coach was when he came down onto the touchline and his heated demeanour would no doubt have contributed to the unfortunate scenes, with the two sets of players jostling each other after the final whistle.

Contemponi coming across as a hot-head is not news to me so while we will await the results of a RFU inquiry into the incident, I definitely won’t automatically be siding with him just because he’s from the southern hemisphere and because there might be some anathema towards Curry for the Bongi incident.

Last year, following the Bok win in the decisive Castle Lager Rugby Championship game against the Pumas in Nelspruit, my colleague Brenden Nel was informed by a source in the Bok management that Contepomi had had an unseemly and ugly outburst against the refereeing team.

As the good journalist he is, Brenden asked questions about it to Contepomi in the post-match press conference, only for Contepomi to decide attack is the best form of defence and attack Brenden.

A lot of people who watch Brenden’s Youtube channel who don’t really understand how journalism works, and wouldn’t have known that Brenden was acting on reliable information from a source that for obvious reasons he could not disclose, then attacked him for “disrespecting a coach”.

Asking a question in a press conference is not disrespect, it is your professional duty, or otherwise why have press conferences? And like with Michael Cheika, who during his time as a coach was so hot-headed he was known to break chairs in coaching boxes and once initially refused to attend a Kings Park press conference unless I left the room, because he’d mistakenly confused me with a SA Rugby employee he had clashed with earlier in the day, I think the jury should be out on just how much respect Contepomi does deserve.

Brenden was told by some Argentinians who have worked with Contepomi or covered his career as journalists that if he did lose his temper in an unacceptable way after that Mbombela test last September it would not be out of character. And should a coach be allowed to confront an opposing player after a game?

Incidents happen on the rugby field, the Pumas are certainly not innocent when it comes to that - think an early game challenge that injured Grant Williams at Ellis Park a few years ago - and if Curry told Contepomi to “fxxx off”, as he alleged at the press conference afterwards, he may well have been in his rights to do so.

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