Bokke champs because they care about each other
Scramble defence is the most powerful defence in rugby because to scramble means you care about your mate.
The Springboks are champions of the world because each guy cares more about his mate than he does about himself.
You don’t win a quarterfinal, semifinal and final by one point each time because you are more talented or you played the perfect game. You win it because, somehow, somewhere, someone wanted to make that tackle.
Scramble on Google: “Make one’s way quickly or awkwardly up a steep gradient or rough ground by using one’s hands as well as one’s feet.”
Meet the Springboks, champions of the rugby world in 2019 and 2023 because they used their hands and feet. They also used their minds, as much as they did their physically imposing natural gifts.
The Springboks are not champions of the rugby world because they are a better team when compared to France, England and
New Zealand. One point doesn’t make you a better team; it makes you the winning team.
France could have beaten the Springboks. The French will tell you they should have won. Equally England.
The All Blacks supporters will say their team lost the final because two of their kickers missed a conversion and penalty. They would not be wrong.
Here is the kicker: The Boks won, not because they had the better players but, in a South African context, they had the right players.
Bongi Mbonambi had carried the hooker responsibility all through the tournament when Malcolm Marx got injured at training. He lasted three minutes in the final and a 37year-old flanker, Deon Fourie, played hooker and captained South Africa in the last few minutes of the final.
WOW. Jasper Wiese, asked to play out the final for only a few minutes, carried the last play of the game from No 8 — as if he was taking his family over the border. He wasn’t going back.
Willie le Roux, in his 93rd Test, understood the platinum in field position as a fullback in those final few minutes.
Damian de Allende, schooled at
Milnerton High in Cape Town, gave hope to the kid who isn’t in a private school. The most understated No 12 in world rugby had the strength of the most powerful and most rated No 12 in the world because they are the same person.
Frans Malherbe at tighthead; Fourie, just for being Fourie; Handre Pollard, for those goal kicks; Kurt-Lee Arendse for that tackle; Cheslin Kolbe for that calculated attempt at an intercept; and Kwagga Smith, for the ultimate rugby smash and grab in turning over possession.
Rassie Erasmus and I, in rugby terms, go back 25 years. We love and we loathe each other, all in a day, but the love always wins. When I questioned him on certain selections, he did not disagree. But he said a better player was not necessarily the right player for this squad.
It took me a while to get that, but I did when I saw those players scrambling on defence in the play-offs. The experience and rugby intelligence of Faf de Klerk, not to feed the last scrum on the All Blacks hit, is the stuff of folklore.
But had the All Blacks kicked one conversion from the only try scored in the final the Boks would lose by a point. Those are the fine margins and that is the perspective. Richie Mo’unga missed a conversion and Jordie Barrett missed a late penalty.
Those go over and every decision Rassie and Jacques Nienaber made is condemned. Now, in South Africa, no one gives it a second thought, and for good reason. Why would they?
The Bokke are champions of the world because they were one point richer on the final whistle, and they are champions because the Kiwis missed and they did not, in their selections, in their scrambling defence and in Pollard’s boot. And because of Rassie and Jacques.