Ellis Park is supposed to be the Springboks’ fortress. Instead, on Saturday, it looked more like a pub with the back door left open.
South Africa raced into a 22-0 lead against Australia, only to collapse like a scrum with jelly for a tighthead, handing the Wallabies their first ever win at the venue. Final score: 38-22.
Bok coach Rassie Erasmus, never one to spin straw into gold, didn’t even bother with diplomacy:
We were really dog s**t on the day, and they were very good, but we made them better.
From favourites to fall guys, the Boks unravelled in real time. What started as a runaway gallop turned into a self-inflicted car crash.
Intercepts, loose passes, turnovers at the breakdown, you name it, the Boks served it up.
Australia didn’t need tactical genius, just the patience to watch their hosts beat themselves.
They beat us in most departments. We didn’t scrum them, they beat us in the lineouts, and they bullied us at the breakdown after Siya Kolisi went off and Marco van Staden had to go off for an HIA.
Translation: South Africa got bossed in the very areas they pride themselves on.
The irony? Erasmus put the blame not on players but on himself and his fellow coaches.
We as coaches got it terribly wrong and we have to look at ourselves before we point fingers.
That’s refreshing honesty, but also an indictment. When you’ve got the Wallabies making Ellis Park look like their backyard, something has gone badly wrong.
Missed opportunities only rubbed salt in the wound. Grant Williams, Manie Libbok, and Edwill van der Merwe all made line-breaks that fizzled out.
Instead of tightening the screws, the Boks played like sevens cowboys chasing miracle offloads.
Twenty-two-nil is not winning the game.
The post-mortem was equal parts candour and despair.
The saddest thing is that they took five points, and we didn’t fight back to take a bonus point. I can butter this up and make excuses, but we were really terrible on the day.
Next week’s Cape Town test was meant to be the platform to blood new faces like Ethan Hooker, Canan Moodie, and Morne van den Berg.
Now Erasmus admits he might rip up his own script.
If we don’t play well and we lose momentum, and we did both. We might change our thinking.
The most damning confession? The Boks quit before the final whistle.
It was a bad loss in a bad way, not against a bad team. We didn’t have the fight until the end; there was a stage where I felt our heads were dropping and our shoulders were slumping and that bothered.
And that’s the real headline. Not the scoreline, not the history, not even Rassie’s unfiltered honesty.
The Springboks, world champions, serial scrappers, pride themselves on never rolling over.
But on Saturday, they folded. Ellis Park went from fortress to farce, and the Wallabies danced all over the ruins.
Next stop: Cape Town. And after this debacle, the Boks can’t just bounce back. They need to show they still have the fight that made them world champs and not world chumps.
