The Springboks are looking to do what no other South African squad contesting The Castle Lager Rugby Championship (TRC) has done before. And that is to become the first Bok team to go back-to-back and defend their TRC crown.
Last year, South Africa equalled this weekend’s opponent in their opening game, Australia’s tally of four TRC titles after dominating the 2024 edition by losing only one game – against Argentina – and downing the Wallabies and New Zealand’s All Blacks twice in their double-headers.
The All Blacks remain the TRC’s most successful team, winning it 20 times and, along with the Wallabies team of 2000 and 2001 (when the competition was still called the Tri-Nations) are the only ones to have successfully defended their crown.
In 2005, Captain John Smit’s Springbok team came very close to defending their crown, only to lose their final game 31-27 to the All Blacks in Dunedin.
This year’s edition of the TRC is expected to be a much closer affair as the Springboks face their three Southern Hemisphere foes, who seem to have more settled squads this time around.
An observation that Erasmus agrees with after naming his team to tackle the Wallabies at Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg on Saturday.
We know we still [have to go] play New Zealand, we know the record they have at Eden Park, and we know how tough it is going to be there, and they are on the up.
Razor (Scott Robertson), it is no longer his first year of coaching the All Blacks. I remember my first year of coaching South Africa. We had a 50% win record, and then the players slowly started to understand what you are trying to do and get to understand you as a person. That is in the back of our heads, and just imagine if you don’t have great matches against Australia in these first two, how tough it is going to be to go on tour there.
I know it is an old cliché, but we are firmly focused on trying to win this next game, and then we can start making plans for the second match, before we go on what will be a very daunting tour of New Zealand.
Rassie: All Blacks Also Feeling The Pressure
However, Erasmus added that the pressure to perform in the TRC is not only something his Bok squad will be feeling ahead of the start of this year’s competition, as early slip-ups for their biggest rivals, the All Blacks, could raise the temperature ahead of South Africa’s tour to Kiwi-land in September.
The All Blacks face Argentina’s Los Pumas in two games in South America and, recently, have made it a habit of beating the Kiwis.
Los Pumas have bested New Zealand three times in the recent past. With their historic first win against the All Blacks coming in 2020, and then beating the All Blacks twice in New Zealand in 2022 and last year, respectively.
However, the Argentinians have never bested the Kiwis in their backyard, but Erasmus feels there will be a determination from coach Felipe Contepomi’s side to end that streak.
Rassie: Boks Have Tough Back-to-Back Challenge
Meanwhile, retaining the TRC title and also making sure they keep a hold of mini-series titles like the Nelson Mandela Plate (v Wallabies) and Freedom Cup (v All Blacks) are some of the mini-goals Erasmus has set for his Springbok team this year.
He says of doing what no Bok team has done before:
You don’t know how difficult it is [to defend the TRC], we have never been able to do that, winning it back-to-back. We set ourselves mini targets, and we have never been able to beat Australia five times in a row ever. Those are some of the small things that we look at. They have never been able to beat us here at Ellis Park, so that will be a target for them. Those things we tend to keep internally, but it is nice to see what the media puts out there, spicing things up and getting the crowd and fans involved.
However, our reality is that we are playing against a team that beat the British & Irish Lions in their last encounter this weekend. We desperately want to win the TRC again, but we must beat Australia first, and we have never gone back-to-back, so it remains one of our small goals. But it is not something we choose to say out loud, because then people might say we are windgat (arrogant). So, we will rather say we hope we can do it.
Springbok team to face the Wallabies
- 15 Aphelele Fassi
- 14 Edwill van der Merwe
- 13 Jesse Kriel
- 12 Andre Esterhuizen
- 11 Kurt-Lee Arendse
- 10 Manie Libbok
- 9 Grant Williams
- 8 Siya Kolisi
- 7 Pieter-Steph du Toit
- 6 Marco van Staden
- 5 Lood de Jager
- 4 Eben Etzebeth
- 3 Wilco Louw
- 2 Malcolm Marx
- 1 Ox Nché
Replacements:
- 16 Bongi Mbonambi
- 17 Jan-Hendrik Wessels
- 18 Asenathi Ntlabakanye,
- 19 Franco Mostert
- 20 Kwagga Smith
- 21 Cobus Reinach
- 22 Canan Moodie
- 23 Damian Willemse
