BOK SEASON STARTS: Crucial to make the most of low key start

With the Barbarians concept not as easy to execute as it is to conceptualise at this time when international quality players are heavily committed, the Springbok international season will get off to a low key start when they host the invitation team in Cape Town on Saturday.

BREAKING! The first #Springboks squad for the season is out, the available players will assemble in Johannesburg on Sunday 🇿🇦#ForeverGreenForeverGold

— Springboks (@Springboks) June 5, 2025

Indeed, the first stage of this year is very different to 2024, when the Boks effectively had just one game, their first following their win in the Rugby World Cup final eight months prior to that, before going into a two match series against the main contenders for their No 1 ranking, Ireland.

The Barbarians game will be followed by two games against Italy, who will no doubt be built up to be more than they really are. Make no mistake, Italy have made great strides in recent seasons, and you can ask France what happens if you take them lightly. But the squad their coach announced a few weeks ago was missing several top players.

While they are a nation on the rise, helped in no small way by their participation in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship, which will make South Africa a much less alien place for them to visit than it would otherwise have been, they are a long way off being one of the big three in the Six Nations.

The Boks will play their second game of a two test series against Italy in Port Elizabeth and then head across the country in an easterly direction to Nelspruit, where they will finish up the preamble to the Castle Lager Rugby Championship by facing Georgia.

RASSIE WILL WANT OPPONENTS TO RAISE THEIR GAME

Bok coach Rassie Erasmus, aware of the need to create depth by subjecting as many players as possible to a proper international examination, will probably find himself in the rare position for a coach of hoping that the opposition will front and give his team a good go.

Starting at the DHL Stadium on Saturday, where there should be several newcomers and maybe a few returnees after long absences who will be eager to show they belong in the green and gold jersey.

But while it should suit him for his team’s opponents to be competitive, the main emphasis will be on ensuring that a wide group of players gains international experience in what is arguably the most crucial year of the four that separate the last World Cup in France in 2023 from the next one in Australia in 2027.

This is a year where decisions will have to be made when it comes to how many of the players who started off the World Cup winning sequence for Erasmus in Japan in 2019 will be ready to front the challenge in 2027.

It is easy to understand Erasmus’ loyalty to the core of the group that dug South African rugby out of the hole it was in during the Allister Coetzee years to again become the No 1 rugby nation. After the 2019 success, where they also won the Rugby Championship, that team went on to win a series against the British and Irish Lions two years later.

Most of those players were still present when a second successive World Cup was won two years after that, and most of the many players who are now beyond the age of 30 still looked the part when the Boks won last year’s Rugby Championship. The Boks are No 1 in the world currently, and you know that old saying about not needing to fix things that aren’t broken.

FATHER TIME WAITETH FOR NO MAN

However, Erasmus showed his awareness in his selections last year, and his willingness to experiment and throw some players in at the deep end, of another old saying - that Father Time waits for no man. He will be only too aware from his own experience as a player of how suddenly your powers can evaporate, be it because of the passing of time and age suddenly catching up to you, or as in his case also the impact of injuries.

Speak to players who were renowned for their pace in their pomp about it and you might hear some fascinating stories. Like “Suddenly I found myself several metres short when chasing a ball of where I would have been the previous season, and that’s when it hit me - I had become too old for it.”

It can happen to anyone, in fact the freaks like Deon Fourie aside it would be more accurate to say it happens to everyone. And while it is nice to think of our Bok heroes as Superhuman, the reality is that they are human.

Even if they are again excellent in this coming season, that does not mean that they will still be excellent when the next World Cup arrives. This is 2025, not 2027.

CIRCUMVENTING 12-MONTH SEASON CURVEBALL

There’s another curve ball that has to be fronted by the top players, which is the 12-month season. Even the overseas-based players, because they play in the Rugby Championship when their club teammates are resting, have to contend with that challenge.

Ideally if South Africa is going to continue to be aligned to the northern season at club level the Boks should be playing in the Six Nations (which would obviously have to become the Seven Nations), but that doesn’t look like it is going to happen any time soon.

So the Boks have to make the most of the situation they find themselves in, and one way of covering for potential burnout or the injuries that come from not having a proper off-season is just to make sure that there is so much depth that there is always someone ready to step in.

Lest it be forgotten, the Boks got a taste of the reality that the stars are not always aligned in a World Cup at the start of the last global showpiece tournament when they went in without star players Handre Pollard, Lood de Jager, and Lukhanyo Am, and then they lost Malcolm Marx quite early on.

South Africa right now boasts arguably the most depth of any nation, the possible exception being France, and it is possible to develop a situation whereby the Boks have three teams with the potential to challenge for a World Cup title.

Sound fanciful? Maybe the next few weeks will tell us more for Erasmus is sure to add new players to the ones that already made great strides last year.

ANOTHER SACHA COULD EMERGE IN THIS PERIOD

The Bok coach showed great bravery last year in playing Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu as the starting flyhalf against the All Blacks in Johannesburg last year and he was rewarded for that bravery. In the coming weeks he won’t need to be as brave as mix and match selections should be good enough to win all four games. Who will emerge in Sacha-like fashion to stake a claim for 2027?

But those games are going to be crucial in creating a platform for what comes after that, with this season set to become incrementally more difficult for the Boks at virtually every step - two home Rugby Champions games against Australia are followed by two in New Zealand, then come the Lions slayers Argentina before a blockbusting end of year tour that includes away games against France and Ireland.

In a nutshell, time can’t be wasted. The established players need to show when they do get game time in the next four weeks that they still have it, and the newcomers need to make full use of their opportunities.

SPRINGBOK SQUAD: Damian Willemse, Willie le Roux, Aphelele Fassi, Cheslin Kolbe, Makazole Mapimpi, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Edwill van der Merwe, Canan Moodie, Damian de Allende, Andre Esterhuizen, Jesse Kriel, Ethan Hooker, Manie Libbok, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Handre Pollard, Faf de Klerk, Grant Williams, Cobus Reinach, Morne van den Berg, Jasper Wiese, Evan Roos, Jean-Luc du Preez, Vincent Tshituka, Siya Kolisi, Marco van Staden, Kwagga Smith, Franco Mostert, Ruan Nortje, Lood de Jager, Eben Etzebeth, Salmaan Moerat, Jean Kleyn, Cobus Wiese, RG Snyman, Thomas du Toit, Ox Nche, Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Boan Venter, Vincent Koch, Neethling Fouche, Wilco Louw, Asenathi Ntlabakanye, Bongi Mbonambi, Malcolm Marx, Marnus van der Merwe.

Schedule for June/July

Qatar Airlines Cup

28 June - Barbarians, DHL Stadium, Cape Town 5:10pm

Castle Lager Incoming Tours

5 July - Italy (First test), Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria, 5:10pm

12 July - Italy (Second test), Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, Gqeberha, 5:10pm

19 July - Georgia, Mbombela Stadium, Nelspruit, 5:10pm