Wallabies v Springboks: Five takeaways as ‘simply magnificent’ star shines in Socceroo-style victory
Wallabies scrum-half Ryan Lonergan impressed against the Springboks.
Following a 42-38 victory for Australia over South Africa at Optus Stadium, here’s our five takeaways from a Test match that will take some beating this year.
11 men, one line, and the world champions coming
Picture those last six minutes because you’ll never see anything like them again in Test rugby.
Harry Wilson is in the sin bin, Ryan Lonergan is in the sin bin, Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii is in the sin bin, Hunter Paisami has just joined them, the stadium scoreboard is showing the wrong score, the TMO’s phone line has gone down for the second time in a quarter of an hour, and 11 Wallabies are standing on their own line in front of 50,000 people with the full Springbok bench, the bomb squad, the men who’ve closed out two World Cup finals, coming at them off a scrum that’s just split their replacement loosehead like a cheap deckchair. 21 points have gone by in 12 minutes. Ox Nche is over from a tap with the clock dead, the conversion goes over, 42-38, and there’s still a restart to survive. The Wallabies became the Socceroos for six minutes, 11 men in gold defending a line, and they held.
It’s the greatest Wallaby win in 11 years, and we don’t say that lightly from a rugby correspondent that watched them beat England at Twickenham in a World Cup pool game in 2015. Australia led the Springboks at half-time for the first time since 2022, scored 42 points against them for the first time since the 49-0 in Brisbane 20 years ago, and kept the Mandela Challenge Plate after Ellis Park last August, and they did it on the ground that opens the World Cup a year and four days from now, against the two-time champions, with Les Kiss now unbeaten after five Tests and a squad that knows something no coaching plan can teach it.
On Friday we said Australia would win the first half hour and lose the last one, and we called it South Africa by 15; we were right about the first part and wrong about everything after it, and the honest reading is that Australia deserved this by a distance. 42-17 with 15 to play was the true scoreline, and the comeback came against 12, then 11 men, off a scrum that finally found something to push against once Angus Bell had gone. Andre Esterhuizen, the first-time captain, said afterwards that Australia had capitalised on every South African error and that discipline had let his side down, which is fair, and it’s a rarer thing than it should be for a losing captain to say.
Through all the chaos Andrea Piardi had a very good night, the penalty-only call on Ethan Hooker’s high shot on Ben Donaldson, the long advantage and the Wilson yellow all sound, and none of it was helped by a TMO line that failed twice in the last 15 minutes and a scoreboard that couldn’t keep up; his screen time went through the roof on a night the phone kept cutting out. The rugby was brilliant and the technology was catastrophic, at the venue where World Rugby opens its tournament in 12 months.
How Kiss beat the blitz
For 10 minutes Australia were going nowhere. Every carry died short of the line, the ruck ball was glacial, Donaldson was standing so deep behind it he could have cocked his leg relieved himself against his own posts, and the Springbok blitz, which had been coached to hit the 10, was hitting him harder than physics deems possible. The half-time carrying sheet is the mechanism in numbers: Australia had 72 carries to South Africa’s 33 and got over the gain line on 29 of them, roughly four in 10, whilst the Boks got over on 23 of 33, seven in 10. Every carry stopped short is a slow ruck, because the cleaners arrive to a ball going backwards, and 31 of them in a half is how 57 per cent of possession becomes 53 rucks and no tempo.
What Kiss did about it, inside the half rather than at the break, is the coaching story of the match as he and his team adapted brilliantly on the hoof. Australia stopped putting Donaldson at first receiver. Fraser McReight, Wilson, Rob Valetini and Paisami took the ball in the 10 channel instead, so the blitz hit a forward or a centre rather than the fly-half, and Donaldson moved out to second receiver, where he got the ball with the line already committed and a picture in front of him rather than a Springbok. Lonergan started demanding pace off the floor, Paisami and Len Ikitau got over the gain line seven times each in the half, and by the 24th minute Ikitau was under the posts off a lineout switched between two pods, Lukhan Salakaia-Loto held up short and offloading, the ball out of the tackle before a ruck could form. Four minutes later Suaalii beat Aphelele Fassi in the air to Lonergan’s kick and Ikitau had his second, and on the stroke of half-time Australia went 14 phases and Suaalii’s pass put Donaldson himself over: the man the blitz was built to bury scored the try that sent Australia in 24-17 up.
Wilson was on the referee’s microphone at the restart telling Piardi his side wanted tempo, and the second half opened with Jeremy Williams stealing two Springbok lineouts and McReight turning Ethan Hooker over on the Bok 10. Kiss ran the Springbok defence through the 2000s, when Rassie Erasmus was first a player and then a young coach in the same system, and the pupil’s blitz was taken apart by the teacher moving one man one channel wider.
Ryan Lonergan and the detail
If Lonergan didn’t get the man-of-the-match award there’s a Planet Rugby laptop that’s going to be eaten. The young half-back was simply magnificent. He kicked 11 times for 302 metres, within 20 metres of what the entire Springbok side managed between them, and three of those kicks came straight back into Australian hands, Max Jorgensen catching two under pressure and Suaalii winning the one that made Ikitau’s second try. He passed 74 times, more than the two Bok scrum-halves combined. He exited from a five-metre lineout with the whole bomb squad on, forced the Fassi error in the first-half scramble, and picked the point of attack, short, shot, wide, through the 14 phases before the break and the passage that put Wilson over on the hour.
This was a French-style nine control in the Antoine Dupont manner: the scrum-half as the man who sets the pace, kicks to his wingers to reclaim, and decides where the next carry goes, whilst the ten waits one man wider for the ball to arrive with the picture made. Donaldson had a tough first ten and a very good 70 after it, five kicks for 161 metres and the try, but the game was run from the base of the ruck, and Kiss’s detail was delivered by his nine. The blemish is real and it goes in: the yellow card for cynical play on his own line with the game already won cost a penalty try and 10 minutes of the man running the Test, and a penalty try was coming anyway. He should have let them score.
The last 15 minutes
Erasmus emptied his bench at 49 minutes, all eight replacements at once with the Boks 10 points down, which is a coach telling you what he thought of his first 50, and for 20 minutes the bomb squad went on like eight men late for a fire drill and spent the time looking for the exit. Lood de Jager dropped a crash ball in Paisami’s tackle, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu threw a short pass Canan Moodie put on the floor and Jorgensen picked it up 60 metres out and ignited the afterburners for 42-17, and the scrum, the thing the bench was brought on to win, met Taniela Tupou and Bell and got nothing.
Then Bell went off. Aidan Ross came on at loosehead and Wilco Louw split him out of the first scrum like a man opening a cheap deckchair, and from that moment the Springbok bench had the one thing it needed, a set-piece to grind. Wilson’s high shot on Malcolm Marx made it 14; Lonergan’s cynical play with the penalty try made it 13; Suaalii’s offside under the posts, called by Ben O’Keeffe on the flag, made it 12; Paisami’s head shot on Feinberg-Mngomezulu made it 11. Nche and Louw destroyed Ross for the penalty try, Morne van den Berg went over from the base against a six-man scrum, and Nche went over from the tap with the clock gone. 21 points in 12 minutes, and it still wasn’t enough.
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The honest reading cuts both ways. The Springbok scrum with Nche and Louw is still the best in the world when it gets a chance, and it took Bell leaving the pitch and four yellow cards to give it one; South Africa carried for 295 second-half metres to Australia’s 208 and had 64 per cent of the territory, so the pressure was real, but the comeback was built against a side that couldn’t field a front-row, and when Esterhuizen’s pass went to Wright with a three-man overlap outside him, the world champions were being read by the last defender on the pitch. Jorgensen said afterwards they’d been down four men and stuck in there, and that the first 60 was what they’d been working on, and both halves of that are true.
The six numbers, and what each side learned
Run Sunday through the six measures we set out on Friday. South Africa built fewer rucks, 68 to 103, and carried for more metres, 437 to 382, so two columns to the Boks; turnovers conceded were five apiece, McReight and Paul de Villiers with three each; Australia kicked 596 metres to 322, nearly double, so that column’s theirs; the penalty count isn’t on the sheet, though four yellows in 10 minutes tells you where it finished; and the 22 entries aren’t recorded either, though five tries from 92 carries says the Bok entries were the productive ones.
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That’s two columns to the Boks, one to Australia, one level and two unrecorded, and the side that won the numbers lost the match, which puts Perth alongside Ellis Park as the exception to the model, and both exceptions are Wallaby wins over the Springboks in 13 months. Both times Australia won the air, scored early, kept the ball, 103 rucks and 65 per cent of possession on the hour, and dared the Boks to turn them over; on Sunday they managed it five times, and it wasn’t enough.
What Australia learned is that the second-receiver shape beats a blitz, that Lonergan can run a Test, that Suaalii on the wing works, three defenders beaten, a try assist and the aerial win over Fassi, that the pack can steal lineouts and win collisions without Josh Canham, with Salakaia-Loto huge in his place, and that Bell, 11 carries and the loosehead that held Louw for 50 minutes, is the man they can’t take off. Man for man it’s hard to name a Springbok who had the better of his opposite number, with two exceptions: Wilco Louw over Ross at the scrum, and De Villiers, three turnovers and the best of the breakdown for half an hour until McReight’s three evened it.
What South Africa learned is that 13 changes hold up at the set-piece and in the scramble, the one that got back into its own 22 to stop Ikitau was as good as anything they did, but not in the loose-forward collision without Pieter-Steph du Toit and Jasper Wiese; that Handré Pollard has a pass in him, the one for Edwill van der Merwe’s first try was the best of the day; that Ethan Hooker, 60 metres and five from five over the gain line, and Fassi, 59 metres, are Test back-three players; that a bench sent on all at once needs a scrum to work from and doesn’t get one for free; and that Elrigh Louw, 15 tackles and the penalty that gave Australia 27-17, isn’t yet the answer at seven.
Most of all they learned what Esterhuizen said in his first post-match interview as captain, that they need to be better than this. The Springboks open their World Cup defence against Italy in Adelaide on 3 October 2027; Australia kick off the tournament two days earlier, on this ground, against Hong Kong China.
READ MORE: Wallabies v Springboks: Result, scorers, match stats, line-ups