Opinion: 2025 is the year the Springboks stopped being a team that wins despite its attack and became one that wins because of it
Springboks fly-half Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu with an inset of Tony Brown.
For much of the past decade, the Springboks have existed in a curious duality.
Admired and misunderstood, revered for their physical dominance and defensive brutality, yet persistently caricatured as a side wedded to conservatism, pragmatism and a brand of rugby that prioritised survival over expression, territory over ambition, and control over creativity.
It is a perception that was not entirely unfair, given how often South Africa were content to win games without ever really trying to entertain along the way.
And yet, to reduce the Springboks to caricature is to miss the point, because winning back-to-back World Cups was never an accident, nor the product of stubbornness, but rather the outcome of a ruthlessly efficient system built around shared emotional values, forensic detail and an unwavering commitment to strengths that others struggled to match.
Still, even amid that sustained success, the question lingered. What would happen if South Africa ever chose to attack with the same conviction with which they defended?
In 2025, we finally received the answer.
From Controlled Power to Connected Ambition
Admired and misunderstood, revered for their physical dominance and defensive brutality, yet persistently caricatured as a side wedded to conservatism, pragmatism and a brand of rugby that prioritised survival over expression, territory over ambition, and control over creativity.
This has been a pivotal year for the Springboks, not simply because they won, or because they won well, but because it marked the moment when their attacking game stopped being a supplementary tool and became a defining weapon. Not an accessory, but an emerging foundational pillar.
That shift was driven not by ideological strategic overhaul but by intelligent tactical evolution under Tony Brown, whose influence has allowed South Africa to expand without compromising, to create without softening, and to play with ambition while remaining unmistakably themselves.
The roots of that evolution were visible as early as 2024, when Brown’s arrival began to loosen the attacking framework without dismantling it, nudging the Springboks away from rigid predictability and towards something more fluid, more adaptive and more willing to keep the ball alive in areas of the field where they had historically preferred to reset and reload. Even then, the numbers were instructive rather than decorative. South Africa led the 2024 Rugby Championship for tries scored with 24, linebreaks with 50, and running metres with more than 3,000, while also recording their highest average points-per-game return in the competition since the professional era began.
Those gains did not plateau in 2025. Instead, the Bok Bakkie simply accelerated, faster, sharper and far more connected.
The Numbers That Signal a Genuine Shift
If 2024 was proof that South Africa could attack differently, then 2025 was the season that confirmed they were now built to do so. Across the Rugby Championship, the Springboks scored 27 tries and more than 200 points, both tournament records, whilst increasing their average tries per match from four to four-and-a-half. It is a meaningful jump at Test level, where margins are traditionally slim and opportunities fiercely contested.
To understand how dramatic that shift is, it helps to look backwards.
Between 2019 and 2023, South Africa averaged fewer than three tries per game in the Rugby Championship, regularly finishing behind their rivals for linebreaks and attacking metres, and often prioritising territory and scoreboard pressure over ball-in-hand ambition. They won, often magnificently, but they rarely flowed. The contrast in 2025 could hardly be sharper.
More revealing than the headline numbers were the process statistics beneath them. Offloads rose from 26 in 2024 to 46 in 2025. Defenders beaten climbed from 139 to 160. Clean breaks continued to trend upwards despite opposition defences setting increasingly conservatively against them. Just as telling was South Africa’s improved strike rate from multi-phase possession, with a higher percentage of tries now coming after four or more phases. It was a clear indicator of patience, connectivity and decision-making under pressure rather than reliance on first-phase dominance alone.
In a game increasingly defined by efficiency, the Springboks mastered that elusive and key quality.
This was not reckless expansion for expansion’s sake either. South Africa retained one of the lowest turnover counts per carry in the Championship while simultaneously increasing ball-in-hand time and attacking width. It suggests a side that has learned not only how to play more, but how to play smarter.
Comment: Why South Africa want England again and why the wait matters more than it seems
The Architecture of ‘Tonyball’
This is where Tony Brown’s influence becomes unmistakable, because the Springbok attack has not evolved through cosmetic shape changes but through a redefinition of purpose within phases and the empowerment of exceptional individuals. Power is no longer treated as an endpoint; more so it is a trigger, a means of creating defensive imbalance that is immediately exploited through footwork, tip-on passes, late support lines and forwards staying alive beyond contact.
If you want proof, look to the big men; the shift is visible not only in the backs, but in how South Africa now uses their tight five. Players such as Eben Etzebeth, long valued primarily for collision dominance and defensive authority, have become increasingly involved as connective pieces in attack, tipping passes late, holding defenders and enabling movement beyond the gainline rather than simply ending phases on it. The Springboks still win collisions, and of course they always will, but now they connect them with ball alive and with attacking ambition.
Under Brown, forwards are no longer just the foundation of the attack, they are part of its flow. More passes are being thrown by tight-five players, more tries are being scored off second and third touches, and more defensive lines are being bent before they are broken.
The emergence of Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu as a genuine attacking conductor in 2025 is emblematic of the same philosophy. Trusted to shape games rather than simply manage them, he has thrived within a framework that encourages instinct supported by structure, and his statistical output, from points scored to linebreak assists, reflects a system that now empowers decision-makers rather than restrains them.
Crucially, none of this has diluted South Africa’s control. They remain among the most efficient defensive teams in the world, continue to dominate the set-piece, and still rank highly for territory and kick-return effectiveness. That makes their attacking growth even more significant making this more about augmentation, rather than substitution.
A Club Culture, A National Superpower
What truly elevates this Springbok side, however, is the environment in which this evolution has taken place. South Africa operates less like a traditional national team and more like a fully integrated club side, one built on continuity, shared language, managed performance peaks and rest troughs, and an internal standard that no longer resets between Test windows. In short, they’re Rassie’s kinsfolk, and a group that shares and recognises the cultural values of the national extended family they represent.
Selection stability, role clarity and tactical consistency have created a group that absorbs new ideas without losing cohesion and that is precisely why their attacking growth has felt sustainable rather than experimental. Players arrive into camp already fluent in the cultural DNA, systems, expectations and detail, allowing evolution to occur at the margins rather than requiring wholesale adjustment.
This club-culture effect underpins South Africa’s status as a genuine rugby superpower heading into 2026. It enables them to develop younger players within an established framework, to refine attacking layers against elite opposition, and to address specific work-ons. These include red-zone efficiency against fully set defences, attacking accuracy under fatigue, and continued succession planning in key decision-making positions, all without ever destabilising the whole.
The landmark results of 2025 reflect that maturity. The dismantling of the All Blacks in Wellington combined physical authority with attacking variation. The 73–0 demolition of Wales, featuring tries from ten different scorers, showcased depth, shared vision and ruthless execution across the squad. These were not outliers. They were expressions of a system functioning at scale.
And the final number tells its own story. South Africa finished 2025 not only as the Rugby Championship’s most efficient defensive side, but also its most productive attacking one. It is a combination that has historically belonged only to the most dominant teams of any era.
That is why 2025 matters in a way that transcends trophies; this is the year South Africa stopped being framed as a team that wins despite its attack and became one that wins because of it. The year Tony Brown’s influence shifted from interesting subplot to central narrative, and the year the Springboks confirmed that modern attacking ambition and traditional dominance are not opposing forces, but complementary ones when aligned correctly.
2025 was not merely another successful season, it was the year the Springboks changed what they are, and in doing so, reminded the rugby world what a true superpower looks like.