Springboks v Australia preview: Rassie Erasmus’ ‘well-oiled machine’ to overpower ‘vastly improved’ Wallabies
Springboks lock Eben Etzebeth and Wallabies second rower Will Skelton.
The Rugby Championship kicks off in Johannesburg on Saturday as the defending champion Springboks host the Wallabies at Ellis Park Stadium.
2025 will be the last full tournament until at least 2028, with South Africa hosting the All Blacks next year, as a truncated competition is slated in Rugby World Cup years.
New Zealand have dominated the Rugby Championship throughout the history of the tournament, winning 20 of the 29 editions of the competition and its previous iterations.
However, the Springboks now have the opportunity to become just the second team other than the All Blacks, also Australia in 2001, to win back-to-back titles, but will need to get off to a winning start against the Wallabies.
Erasmus’ men made light work of their mid-year international opponents, sweeping the Barbarians, Italy and Georgia aside in comprehensive fashion while Australia endured a far more fiercer task in the form of the British and Irish Lions.
Joe Schmidt’s men fell to back-to-back narrow defeats to the famous touring team but emphatically responded with a compelling victory in the third Test.
This has opened the debate about whether the Springboks will be under-cooked, the Wallabies spent or battle-hardened.
Either way, both teams will be raring to go hammer and tongs at one another, setting the tone for the Championship.
Where the game will be won
The breakdown has been the buzzword in the week, an area of the game that Schmidt is renowned to be a guru in, and Erasmus’ back-row selection points to it being a real area of focus in eGoli.
Captain Siya Kolisi has featured regularly for the Sharks at the back of the scrums throughout the season, and while the Bok boss frankly stated that he wasn’t an option in the position in Green and Gold, he has had a change of heart. The selection call points to an intensified emphasis on rucks with Marco van Staden filling Kolisi’s regular spot on the side of the scrum.
Both teams possess massive threats over the ball, with Malcom Marx and Ox Nche added further jacklers for the hosts, while Fraser McReight, Harry Wilson and Tom Hooper are all menaces at the breakdown for the Wallabies.
In matches this year, both sides have shown serious venom on turnover ball attack and have the pace and skillset to reproduce that again on Saturday.
While the breakdown will undoubtedly play a massive role in the outcome of the game, one cannot ignore the influence of the set-pieces. When these two sides met last year in Australia, it was the scrum and lineout that really spearheaded the Springboks’ charge to victory. The Twin Tower lineouts, rolling mauls and scrum penalties overwhelmed the Wallabies, and while South Africa have certainly innovated and added further strings to their bows, their core strengths have remained.
The forward pack remains a destructive force in the set-pieces, and as shown with their ploys against Italy, are still hellbent on taking the fight against the opposition into the gutters. The Wallabies have the tonnage and skillset to battle the Boks in those facets of the game, but if they are unable to survive in the gutters, it could turn into a bloodbath.
Last time they met
What they said
Wallabies boss Schmidt is well aware of the threats that the Springboks pose and reserved praise for the manner in which they continue to push the boundaries and expand their game.
“The Springboks have grown their game a little bit,” he said.
“I have a lot of respect for Tony Brown and his acumen, while I’ve worked with Felix Jones, Rassie and Jerry Flannery and I think they have got a very, very strong coaching group.
“I’m expecting that they’ll be really strong in the set-pieces as they always are, their kick-chase game will be very strong, on any turnover or any bit of space they get, they have lethal finishers.”
Delving further into how he believes that the Boks have shifted their game, Schmidt continued: “Tony Brown has added more width to the South African game.
“You will often see them even go side to side very, very quickly and they’ve got some very efficient passing capability with a guy like Manie Libbok, who I still remember clearly executing that no-look kick pass against Scotland at the World Cup.
“With that sort of abundance of talent that they have, they can play in so many different ways, they can outmuscle, outskill and outspeed you. So we will have to be a lot better than we were in that last Lions Test, not just because of who we are playing but where.”
While there has been a debate around the battle readiness of the two teams, Erasmus is wary of the fact that Australia may well be more conditioned for high-stakes Test matches after their clashes with the British and Irish Lions.
This after the Boks navigated their July Tests with relative ease, with Erasmus certain that Australia will be a far bigger tactical challenge.
“We believe in the intensity of our training sessions, but of course that is different from the games, when you get the pressure and nerves,” he explained.
“You get the referees who are under pressure too and have to make big decisions in games, which they would have experienced against the Lions, which we didn’t, because our games weren’t really close.
“Against the Lions, they got the tenseness where it came down to one or two errors, but on the other side of it, we can almost pick from a full-strength squad because we were able to rotate a little bit.
“I don’t think that tactically we were really challenged by Italy or Georgia, but those were really physical matches.
“This week, we are playing at altitude, but I’m not sure if they are punched out after that, or if they are really battle-ready, and you are never sure about who did the right thing. We believe that we have.”
He also expects a confident Wallabies outfit on Saturday.
“I can’t see them not being on a high after the way they finished that Lions series.” he said.
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Players to watch
The latest pocket rocket speedster stands on the cusp of a Springboks first on Saturday as a try against Australia will see Edwill van der Merwe become the first South African to score in each of his first four Test matches in the Green and Gold. Last year this time, Van der Merwe was cheering the Springboks on from the stands after sustaining an injury after his try-scoring debut against Wales, but now gets the opportunity to make his mark on his ‘favourite ground’ in the country and the one where his career really took off. At 28 years old, he is a late bloomer, but that matters little as he is a tremendously gifted runner with ridiculous strength for a man of his build.
Staying with the Boks’ backline and an injury to Damian de Allende has paved the way for Andre Esterhuizen to earn his 21st Test cap for the Springboks and his fifth against the Wallabies. In a different era, he would have surely had more caps for his country, but Esterhuizen is by no means a part-time international. He is the classic mould of a South African number 12 gifted with sheer brutality on either side of the ball, but has married that up with an equally effective playmaking game, crafted from his time with Harlequins. To further add to his ever-expanding skillset, he is starting to dabble in loose forward play at the highest level.
Eddie Jones sang the praises of Bok half-back Grant Williams in his preview of the Rugby Championship fixture with the number nine quicker than most outside backs in the international game. But to whittle his game down to being simply a speed merchant is wildly off the mark, as he possesses a superb pass and even more impressive box-kicking game. It’s clear that the Springboks want to up the pace on the Highveld and Williams’ pairing with Manie Libbok is certainly a tantalising way to go about that.
With a forward pack filled with Rugby World Cup winners, our attention turns to the heavyweight men on the Boks bench with rookies Boan Venter and Asenathi Ntlabakanye paired with veteran hooker Bongi Mbonambi. As mentioned above, the set-pieces are bound to be a huge battleground throughout the game, and the pressure will be on the two props who will both be earning just their second Test caps. Both players impressed in their respective debuts and will look to do so again, but face tough opponents in the form of Angus Bell and Zane Nonggorr.
Overall, this is a youthful-looking Wallabies team, but in the half-backs, there is vast experience with Nic White putting his retirement on hold and will partner James O’Connor, who earns his first cap for his country in three years. White is infamous with Springboks fans after the previous run-ins with the back-to-back World Cup winners, but his skillset is still respected. The number nine put in a marvellous performance against the British and Irish Lions in the third Test, illustrating that he still has plenty to offer at the highest level, and the Boks will be wary of the threat that he and O’Connor pose, with the latter shining for the Crusaders in Super Rugby this season.
The threats aren’t just in the backline for the Wallabies as a rejuvenated Taniela Tupou packs down on the tighthead side of the scrum. The front-rower has played a pivotal role in previous victories over the Springboks, and that won’t be forgotten by the men in green despite Tupou’s struggles with form before tackling the Lions.
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Main head-to-head
While there is quality littered throughout the two matchday squads, there is no head-to-head that comes anywhere near the heavyweight bout between Eben Etzebeth and Will Skelton.
Etzebeth has been a mainstay and consistent performer for well over 100 Test matches for the Springboks and shows no signs of slowing down as he continues his rise up the most capped international players’ list of all-time. The second-rower never shies away from the brutal side of the game and will be relishing the challenge that Skelton poses.
The Wallabies powerhouse doesn’t have the same pedigree on the international stage, but has time and time again proved his worth in Wallabies gold and in Europe. An imposing figure that never fails to throw his weight around the pitch, Skelton not only gets under the skin of the opposition but is a brute force too and is one of the best defensive maul operators in the game. Again, that was an area of the game where the Wallabies were comfortably overpowered last year, and Skelton will go a long way in neutralising that threat.
It’s a battle between two world-class talents, who produce their best when it matters and can manufacture game-defining plays.
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Prediction
Much will rely on whether the Springboks are battle-hardened and if the Wallabies are worn out. Still, recent meetings between the two sides point to one winner, South Africa.
The Springboks are on a four-game winning streak against Australia and have won each of the last eight meetings between the two teams in South Africa. Additionally, they have won seven on the bounce against this weekend’s opposition in Jo’burg, while Erasmus’ charges have won six of their last seven at Ellis Park.
In both Tests last year, the Wallabies were comfortably outclassed, but Schmidt has vastly improved the squad and their performances since then, with results speaking for themselves. Still, the task at hand just looks to be too great as they go up against a well-oiled Springboks machine that can rip teams apart in so many different ways.
In Australia last year, the Boks racked up victories by the margins of 26 and 18 points, the latter in torrid conditions, but we’d expect the Wallabies to put up a far greater fight this time around, but will ultimately be overpowered and outclassed by the world champions by a margin of 15 points.
Springboks v Wallabies: How to watch the Rugby Championship opener
Previous results
2024: South Africa won 30-12 in Perth
2024: South Africa won 33-7 in Brisbane
2023: South Africa won 43-12 in Pretoria
2022: South Africa won 24-8 in Sydney
2022: Australia won 25-17 in Adelaide
2021: Australia won 30-17 in Brisbane
2021: Australia won 28-26 on the Gold Coast
2019: South Africa won 35-17 in Johannesburg
2018: South Africa won 23-12 in Gqeberha
2018: Australia won 23-18 in Brisbane
2017: The teams drew 27-27 in Bloemfontein
The teams
South Africa: 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 (c), 7 Pieter-Steph du Toit, 6 Marco van Staden, 5 Lood de Jager, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Wilco Louw, 2 Malcolm Marx, 1 Ox Nche
Replacements: 16 Bongi Mbonambi, 17 Boan Venter, 18 Asenathi Ntlabakanye, 19 Franco Mostert, 20 Kwagga Smith, 21 Cobus Reinach, 22 Canan Moodie, 23 Damian Willemse
Wallabies: 15 Tom Wright, 14 Max Jorgensen, 13 Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, 12 Len Ikitau, 11 Dylan Pietsch, 10 James O’Connor, 9 Nic White, 8 Harry Wilson (c), 7 Fraser McReight, 6 Tom Hooper, 5 Will Skelton, 4 Nick Frost, 3 Taniela Tupou, 2 Billy Pollard, 1 James Slipper
Replacements: 16 Brandon Paenga-Amosa, 17 Angus Bell, 18 Zane Nonggorr, 19 Jeremy Williams, 20 Langi Gleeson, 21 Tate McDermott, 22 Tane Edmed, 23 Andrew Kellaway
Date: Saturday, August 16
Venue: Emirates Airline Park, Johannesburg
Kick-off: 17:10 local (16:10 BST, 15:10 GMT)
Referee: Ben O’Keeffe (NZR)
Assistant referees: James Doleman (NZR), Gianluca Gnecchi (FIR)
TMO: Tual Trainini (FFR)
FPRO: Richard Kelly (NZR)
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