How Rassie reclaimed the summit for the Springboks

For many years the myrtle green jersey of the Springboks was a sight to be feared, worn by huge, granite hard warriors who loved nothing more than physically destroying you. But now the fear factor is a wistful memory. We’re at the Principality Stadium, Cardiff in December 2017 and South African rugby seems to be wasting away.

It had taken Wales 93 years to win a match against them but now the Red Dragons had won their last three, in just two years. The All Blacks had humbled them by an incredible 57-0 in the South African émigré enclave of Auckland’s North Shore. OK they’d beaten Italy – but the previous year had been a different story.

It was hard to know which was the biggest humiliation.

All of this at a time when a plummeting Rand was making it impossible to compete financially with heavily subsidised Northern Hemisphere clubs for the services of the best South African players. Like many countries, South Africa only selected home based players so it seemed that the Springboks were going to be bled of talent like a mighty buffalo trapped in a swamp full of leeches.

Add in bitter internal infighting between provincial unions and an inability to cope with government demands for transformational racial integration. All in all you have a once great power on a downward spiral to mediocrity.

That’s what the rugby world perceived. Less obvious was the incredible potential of a generation of huge talent and depth, especially in the forwards, with generational tighthead lock Eben Etzebeth the cornerstone. A lot of big humans who had been gaining experience together from an unusually young age.

But it was going to take a some brilliantly strategic lateral thinking from newly installed Director of Rugby Rassie Erasmus to fulfil that potential as South African rugby seemingly crumbled.

In this article we will look at how a succession of decision makers took huge strategic risks to create an unlikely path to glory. Decisions that have thus far paid off handsomely, although there could be long term consequences. Let’s start off with the forgotten, much maligned men who built the foundations.

ACCELERATING THE RISE OF THE GOLDEN GENERATION

In episode 29 of the excellent Gold Diggers podcast created by our own MDiddy (Matt Durant,) Australian rugby analyst Ben Darwin spoke of how good athletes who play together for a long time, preferably from an early age, can become great players together – both by spurring each other on and developing cohesion by knowing how best to combine. It also helps a lot to maximise their high level experience by bringing them through together as early as possible.

So, contrary to popular belief, the story of the current Springbok golden generation doesn’t start with Rassie Erasmus riding in on his white stallion to save a desperate situation. In Darwin’s theory it’s the players getting experience together that matters. Of course Erasmus has played an incredible role, but the potential was always there because of the decisions of those who went before him.

Our South African correspondents might be able to go back earlier, but I will begin with Heyneke Meyer, who brought no less than nine future World Cup final winning athletes into the Springboks aged around 20-22. He was very unlikely to succeed in the short term with such a young squad, but what an investment.

Then Allister Coetzee brought in another five the following year and Lukhanyo Am the year after that. So Rassie inherited a deep, hugely talented young team with top level experience together in the bank and many years of petrol still in the tank.

RASSIE RENOVATES: 2018/19

Of course, as we’ve already discussed, in other respects Erasmus was handed a bit of a mess. It was like inheriting a huge, solidly built plaashuis on thousands of acres of good land, but the roof’s about to cave in and pompom weed is encroaching.

For me, Rassie’s success was built on seeing where the huge potential lay and finding creative solutions to the seemingly insurmountable problems that could have stopped him from fulfilling it.

For example, whereas many saw racial transformation requirements as being forced to select inferior players, Erasmus saw a wider talent pool. Against the odds he created a genuine team based on brotherhood, mutual respect and bringing pride to a troubled nation – that took incredible leadership. And who would have thought that the sport that for so long symbolised apartheid would unite the nation like nothing else?

On the field, he knew that South Africa’s traditional strength was in the forwards and he had such depth of talent there, young yet with early Test experience together. His predecessors’ expansive tactics weren’t making the most of that so he built a relentless game plan based on power and territory. Selecting an extra forward on the bench carried risks in the backs but his “bomb squad” allowed him to make full use of that forward depth to keep up a fresh, overwhelming presence to grind down opponents throughout the 80 minutes. Innovative thinking to make best use of the available assets.

Rassie also made the momentous decision to select players from overseas. As we’ll discuss later that comes with major compromises, but with so many players heading north it was the only way to field a world class bomb squad. Without that far flung talent it’s doubtful that he could have turned embarrassing losers into the 2019 Rugby World Cup winners. And he ensured cohesion in his starting 15 by selecting 12 of them from just three clubs – the Stormers, Sharks and Bulls.

RUTHLESS PRIORITIES: 2020-23
So far so good. But next came a greater challenge – how to keep up that relentless 80-minute pressure through another World Cup cycle despite all the disadvantages of selecting from abroad and the aging of his team.

Rassie’s solution was all about ruthless prioritisation. We’ve already discussed the bomb squad and this was strengthened to even greater extremes with the addition of yet another forward to the bench in World Cup year. Risk versus huge reward.

Then there was his refusal to travel to Australia for the 2020 Rugby Championship because his players’ preparations had been critically hampered by COVID lockdowns. The rest of SANZAAR felt betrayed but there was no compromise on looking after his men.

He also went to great lengths to slow the game down and get it refereed his way, the most obvious example being the merciless video attack on referee Nick Berry in 2017. For many fans it went against all of the game’s values and it turned the rugby world against him, tainting his reputation forever. Yet he won that Lions series and he’s loved at home. And as Just Nuisance pointed out in March he has since hired Jaco Peyper as an advisor and ordered his team not to criticise refs at all.

Although some of his players did play a bit of an angry game of chase with Karl Dickson after that final Irish field goal this July.

NO COMPROMISE ON ELIGIBILITY
Strategically, Erasmus’ greatest challenge concerned eligibility. This centred on two conflicting priorities.

The first was to ensure that he had all his best players available (if fit) when he really needed them. No players, no bomb squad. The second was to ensure that they would be at their best when it mattered the most, or they wouldn’t be able to keep up that 80-minute effort even with those deep reinforcements.

He made no compromise at all on the first priority. With so many Springboks leaving Super Rugby, Rassie, backed by his board, kept the eligibility criteria completely free so that he could select anybody he liked.

Once he went all in on priority one, how could he possibly avoid compromise on priority two? Most of his players had round the calendar seasons in Northern Hemisphere club competitions, the July internationals and the Southern Hemisphere Rugby Championship. When were they going to get a break from the 12 month season, especially those working for demanding French clubs and their ten month soap opera?

The ingenious solution was to be absolutely ruthless on his definition of which competitions really mattered. Certainly not the United Rugby Championship, with his South Africa based players being given plenty of rest weeks. And not all ordinary Test rugby either, with Rassie even managing to make deals with French and English clubs that he’d rest them from Springbok games if they kept their club workload to a manageable level.

This workload management culminated in a flawlessly executed 2022/23. Going through his World Cup Final team, every single one of them had at least a two month break either before or during the season, solving the 12 month season conundrum. And whereas French internationals regularly played over 30 games a season, reserve lock Jean Kleyn was the hardest working Springbok World Cup finalist with 25. And even he wasn’t expected to be a first choice Springbok at the time.

South Africa paid a price for this prioritisation. The golden generation were around their peak, yet at a time when Ian Foster’s All Blacks were struggling they failed to win a single Rugby Championship after their 2019 success. Also, their overall win rate was less than that of New Zealand, France and Ireland. That’s underachievement.

But ultimately that price was worth paying, never more so when the Boks had the energy to come from 25-17 down in the final quarter to knock out their tiring French foe. Star Le Bleu fly half Romain Ntamack subsequently complained that the only way he could ever get a rest was to get injured. Not a problem for his opponents.

A third priority was maintaining cohesion when players were scattered among many clubs in South Africa, Japan and Europe. If cohesion from club play was impossible, it would have to be cohesion from test play.

No wonder pretty much every selection decision for the final erred on the side of experience. Twelve of the starting fifteen also played in the previous final and one of the others, centre Jesse Kriel, had been partnering Damian de Allende in green since 2015. This was a team that knew how to play together despite their scattered residential geography.

CONCLUSION
Never has a single crop of players dominated two Rugby World Cups like the present South African golden generation. It’s a generation of huge quality and depth, especially in the forwards.

“But the All Blacks also won consecutive titles” you say. The big difference is that these twin triumphs were earned by two very different teams.

Eden Park 2011 was based on the McCaw generation of legends who debuted between November 2001 and November 2004. By the time of Twickenham 2015 they had largely been supplanted by the Rennie generation that won the 2008-2011 World Under 20s. Less than half of the second starting team had played in the previous final.

In contrast, 80% of the Springbok team that started the 2023 final, including all the forwards and inside backs, also played in the 2019 decider. This was only possible because a succession of decision makers took huge strategic risks. Meyer and Coetzee who selected so many so young. Rassie with his unifying leadership, strategic genius and ruthless prioritisation.

It could so easily have gone horribly wrong. The golden generation had a mediocre record outside of World Cups and those three single point wins in France relied on Pollard’s perfect kicking, the misses of opposition kickers and varying degrees of good fortune. Losses in any one of those would have meant a disappointing World Cup cycle overall.

Yet good preparation and motivating leadership creates “luck” and takes advantage of it. And the Springboks would never have had this opportunity without those difficult strategic decisions. This generation will go down in history as the greatest of them all on the field and what a time of unity, pride and happiness they brought to their nation.

As the South African coat of arms says, ! ke e: /xarra //ke – diverse people unite.