The inside story of the Springboks’ monumental achievement

The documentary of the 2021 Springboks’ winning Test series against the British & Irish Lions airs on Supersport this evening and it will be a timely reminder to South Africans of the status of Siya Kolisi’s Springboks as the best among the best.

The documentary will provide insight into just how monumental an achievement it was for the Springboks to beat the best of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Warren Gatland, coaching the Lions for a third successive tour, described his squad as the strongest he had selected in his tenure.

The Lions were expected to win.

Critics of the Springboks described their 32-12 humiliation of England in the 2019 Rugby World Cup final in Japan as a one-hit wonder. Too much was said about England having an off-day and not enough about Kolisi and his teammates having a particularly good day.

The Lions series, played over three Tests, would settle any debate about the Boks’ World Cup title in 2019 being the result of a “smash and grab” job.

The Boks, in 2021, faced adversity like no Springboks team in the history of the game. Covid had ensured the Boks did not play Test rugby for 20 months and when they did finally play a Test against second tier nation Georgia, the consequence was a victory and 26 squad players infected with Covid.

Kolisi and flyhalf Handre Pollard were among the most prominent players who had to isolate for 10 days in Johannesburg, while the uninfected Boks travelled to Cape Town for a match in the guise of SA “A”a week before the three-Test series.

All four matches were played at the DHL Stadium in Cape Town and all in the hollowness of an empty stadium.

The Lions players had enjoyed a full international season of rugby preceding the tour, which included two Six Nations competitions and the Autumn Cup. They were battle-hardened and they were the form players in Europe’s biggest competitions.

The Lions were emphatically the favourites and the Boks had to play the series decider without the injured trio of Pieter-Steph du Toit, Duane Vermeulen and Faf de Klerk.

The 2021 Lions series win, for me, was bigger than any of the three Springboks World Cup title wins.

The Boks did it without home crowd support. They did it without the traditional South African advantage of playing two of the Tests at altitude and they did it against the backdrop of match official bias in that first Test and an equally biased international media and they did it fighting in the presence of Covid.

Mostly, they did it with many of the squad not having played together as a Test team in two years, and they did it after trailing at half-time in the final two Tests.

Defence wins big finals and in the SA “A” match and the three subsequent Tests, the vaunted Lions attack was limited to three tries.

I wrote at the time that the Boks did it “with a squad representative of SA’s wonderful mixture of cultures and races. They did it because Kolisi, the coaches and the players never believed they couldn’t do it.”

The documentary Two Sides will finally give us all an insight into this self-belief. I can’t wait.

There have been some wonderful Springbok teams in the professional era. The 1995 World Cup winners were unbeaten in 14 Tests. The class of 1997/98 were unbeaten in 17 Tests and the 2007 Bok World Cup winners won a series against the Lions in 2009 and beat the All Blacks three times in succession, including the last Test in New Zealand.

They were great teams, but Kolisi and his men are the greatest, simply on the basis of what they had to endure en-route to trumping the Lions.