Anyone who has followed my writing for a while knows I am a continuity man.
Cohesion wins Test matches.
Combinations that have played together, that know each other’s timing at the lineout and the breakdown and in the defensive line, are worth more than any individual on paper. That has been my view for twenty-five years and I do not see much reason to change it.
So when the Springbok team for Perth came out with thirteen changes from the side that finished the series against New Zealand, only Eben Etzebeth and Ethan Hooker keeping their places, a new captain in Andre Esterhuizen, Handre Pollard back at ten, and Herschel Jantjies starting a Test for the first time since November 2021, my first instinct was the one most people had.
That is a lot of change against a team that has not lost in five.
Then a friend of mine, a proper rugby lover, said something over coffee this morning that stopped me. He said,
“Rassie has done something clever here”.
By moving away from the group that played the four Tests against the All Blacks, he has made this Test match meaningful. Not meaningful for the trophy, or the ranking, or the ledger against Australia. Meaningful for the players in that team sheet, because every one of them is being asked a very direct question in a very hard place: can you beat a good Wallaby side, in Australia, without the men who did it against New Zealand?
The more I sat with that, the more I liked it. Let me explain why, and then let me tell you what I think the game itself will turn on, because I have watched this Wallaby team closely twice in August and thereis a lot in there worth knowing.
The rarest thing in Test rugby: a squad five deep.
The thing South Africa have done over the last two and a half years that does not get talked about enough is build depth. Not the depth every coach claims to have, where you can lose one player per position and survive. Real depth. The kind where you look at the locks available to the Springboks right now and count nine men you would be comfortable putting into a Test match, and you look at the props and find much the same.
I cannot remember a team in the last ten or fifteen years who could say that. The All Blacks between 2011 and 2015, who were as good as any side of that era, had very good depth, one or two players down in most positions. Not five. And if I am honest about where the Springboks are thin, it is one jersey. Fly- half. I would say there are three players the Bok management would put in the world-class bracket at ten, and one of them, Pollard, is only just back from injury. Everywhere else the resources are extraordinary.
That is the context for this selection.
This is not a coach resting his best players and hoping to get away with it. It is a coach who knows he has players who have been in and around the squad for two seasons, who have trained against the best team in the world every week, and who now need to be tested against a real opponent, away from home, with the responsibility on them rather than on Kolisi and du Toit and Marx.
If they rise to it, and I think a good number of them will, the Springbok options a year out from the World Cup become deeper and richer still. If they do not, Rassie has learned something he needed to know in September 2026 rather than in September 2027. Either way the information is worth more than the result, and I suspect he knows that better than anyone.
That is what my friend meant by meaningful. It is a Test with a real question inside it.
Why a one-off Test in Perth matters more than it looks.
There is a second reason, and it is on the calendar. This is the first year of the Nations Championship, and both of these teams fly to Europe in November to play for it: three Tests each against northern opposition, and then a finals weekend at Twickenham on the last weekend of November, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, where every team in the competition, Japan included, plays, and where the first champion is crowned.
South Africa are far better placed than Australia to be in that final on current form, but both are in contention, and both coaching staffs will want to know before they get on the plane exactly how deep their squads go. Perth is the last chance to find out against a proper opponent. For the Springboks it is a test of depth ahead of four hard weeks. For the Wallabies it is the first look at what the number one side in the world does to a game plan that has been working.
A word on how I have written the rest of this.
I do not intend to throw hundreds of numbers at you. What I want to do is show you how coaches actually build a picture of an opponent, because it is not opinion, or at least it should not be. When I say Australia set 27 lineouts inside the opposition 22 this year and came away with a try or a penalty from 24 of them, that is a fact. Australia know it, and it is why they play the way they play. The interesting part is what happens when a fact like that meets a defence built to stop it, and that is the part of this game I cannot wait to watch.
The Wallabies are not the team you remember.
Australia have not lost since July. Les Kiss’s first two Tests in charge were against us, Japan, in August, and I will be honest about how that went. At Hanazono it was 14–14 at half-time and we lost 35–32, with both sides scoring from ten entries into the 22. A week later in Townsville they beat us 56–17 and won fifteen turnovers. Then they went to Argentina, won in Jujuy and drew 28–28 in Mendoza with thirteen men on the field at the end, which gave them their first series win in Argentina.
Kiss is unbeaten as a head coach.
Before he took over they lost narrowly to Ireland and comfortably to France, and it is fair to say this Bok side is the sternest test they will have faced under him by some distance.
So I have watched this team more closely than most, and prepared against them. When we did our analysis before the Japan series, the line we used with our coaches was that Australia do not trick you, they besiege you. A quarter of everything they did in July started with a penalty kicked to the corner, and every single lineout they set inside the opposition 22 in those three matches, eleven out of eleven, ended in a try or a penalty.
Between the 22s, their off-the-top strike plays were being turned over half the time and their kicking game had produced no tries at all. The whole plan was to starve the corner. It did not save us in Townsville, but it is still the right read of them, and their numbers since have only confirmed it. Let me give you the shape of the team as it stands now, because the shape is what matters.
They are a corner team.
Across their seven Tests this year they have kicked 59 penalties to touch and attempted three shots at goal, landing one. One penalty goal in seven Test matches. When they get a lineout inside the opposition 22 they are lethal: from 27 such lineouts this season they have scored 16 tries and won eight further penalties. That is 24 positive outcomes from 27. Twenty-two of their 39 tries this year started from a lineout, and 24 of the 39 were finished within a couple of metres of the ruck. They do not need many chances. They average only eight or nine entries into the 22 a game, but they turn two out of three of them into tries, which is the best conversion rate I have seen from any side this year, better even than the All Blacks managed against South Africa.
They have a proper back three.
Max Jorgensen has carried for more than 550 metres this year, Harry Potter has made nine clean breaks, and Tom Wright at fullback is the steadiest of the three. Rob Valetini is still the man who bends the line, with 17 dominant carries in seven games. Fraser McReight and Harry Wilson have both made more than a hundred tackles. And Carlo Tizzano, who does not get the headlines, has won twelve turnovers at the breakdown this year, more than anyone in their squad.
Their lineout is good.
Ninety-three per cent on their own throw across the season, and they have stolen sixteen opposition throws, which is a serious defensive lineout. Their maul defence is less good, and I will come back to that.
So this is a team that will hold its own ball, win penalties, go to the corner, and score from close range. Sound familiar? It should. It is a version of the Springbok game plan, played by a side that has committed to it properly under a coach who understands set piece.
Where the Springboks will go after them.
Now the other side of it, because there are four places in the Wallaby game where the Bok game plan lands very hard.
Australia have conceded fifteen scrum penalties in seven Tests, and thirteen of them came at scrums the opposition was feeding. Argentina alone took seven off them in two Tests. If you read my piece on the New Zealand series you know what the Springbok scrum did to a far more experienced All Black front row: fourteen penalties, eleven on the Bok feed. Perth has a new Springbok front row, Wessels, Grobbelaar and Porthen, with Marx, Nche and Louw waiting on the bench.
That front row is being asked to do what the first-choice unit does, against a scrum that has been giving away penalties on the defensive feed all year. It is the single most important contest in the game, and it will be decided by about the fifth scrum.
The second is the penalty count in Australia’s own half.
Of the 65 penalties the Wallabies have conceded this year, 45 were in their own half and 26 were inside their own 22. Their most-penalised players are a lock, a back-rower and two props. Against most teams that costs you a lineout and a maul.
Against a Springbok side with Pollard at ten it costs you three points nearly every time, because South Africa kicked nine out of ten at goal against New Zealand and never once turned down the shot for the corner when the kick was on. Australia have decided, like the All Blacks, that they are a team that does not kick for goal. That is a fair choice when your attack converts two thirds of its entries. It is a very expensive choice when the other side is taking three every time you are offside at a ruck.
And this is where the chess starts, because the same question runs the other way. The Wallabies have gone to the corner all year and it has worked. But they are now playing the best team in the world, a side that is as good as anyone at stopping a maul and will back its scrum against Australia’s without a second thought. If Australia find themselves in the game at sixty or seventy minutes, does the coaching staff tell the captain to take the three points, something they have walked away from all season, or do they trust the corner against the one defence built to shut it? I have no idea what they will decide, and I doubt they have fully decided either. That single decision, made in the moment, may be the most important call of the afternoon.
The third is the air.
The Wallabies have dropped seven of the 29 defensive high balls they have had to take this year, and opponents have got the ball back from about a quarter of the contestable kicks they have put up against them. South Africa got seven of ten bombs back against New Zealand and regained 43 per cent of everything they put in the air. Fassi at fullback and van der Merwe on the wing are two of the best in South Africa under a high ball. If Jantjies and Pollard decide to make Perth an aerial contest, the Wallaby back three, for all their attacking quality, will spend a long afternoon looking up.
And there is the maul.
When opposition teams have set a lineout inside the Australian 22 this year, the Wallabies have conceded eight penalties and four tries from twenty of them. The Bok maul scored three tries and won a penalty try against New Zealand. With Marx on the bench and a new hooker throwing, the question is not whether the Springboks will maul; it is whether the new lineout can get the ball to the maul cleanly enough to use it.
The contest inside the contest: two packs full of opensides.
There is one more thing from the Japan preparation that I think will decide more of this game than anything above, and it needs a bit of explaining.
The thing that gave Australia energy against us, more than any line break or any maul, was a penalty won in the middle of the field. It sounds ordinary. It is not. Of the 27 lineouts Australia have set inside the opposition 22 this year, 22 came directly from a penalty kicked to touch, and 15 of those 22 became tries. Trace those penalties back and most were won in the opposition half between halfway and the 22, with a handful already inside it, and the offences were overwhelmingly defensive ones: offside, and not releasing the tackled player.
Across the season, half of all the penalties conceded against Australia have been at the ruck or for offside. That is the oxygen for their fire. A defender holds on a second too long forty metres out, Australia kick it to the corner, and the siege begins.
Now look at the two back rows.
Australia’s has been built around Fraser McReight and Carlo Tizzano, two specialist opensides who go hard at the ball, with Harry Wilson at eight. Rassie has answered with two opensides of his own in Marco van Staden and Paul de Villiers, and Elrigh Louw between them. Nobody picks two sevens by accident. South Africa are clearly planning to put the Australian breakdown under the kind of pressure that produced 18 turnovers for New Zealand at Ellis Park, and if they get it right the reward is enormous: Australia’s whole game runs on keeping the ball and winning penalties, and a breakdown that leaks turnovers has neither.
But the same weapon works in both directions, and this is the bit I would be nervous about if I were in the Springbok camp. When you commit players to the ball at every ruck, you concede penalties. Hands in the ruck, off your feet, not rolling away, offside as the line resets. Those penalties go against the defending team far more often than the attacking one, and against Australia every one of them in the middle third is a corner lineout, and every corner lineout is a 24-in-27 proposition.
South Africa do not need to be perfect at the breakdown in Perth. They need to be disciplined in a very specific forty-metre strip of the field, because that is where Australia get their entries from, and Australia are the most efficient side in the world once they have one.
So the game inside the game is this.
Two packs stacked with breakdown specialists, one side whose plan depends on winning penalties, the other whose plan depends on forcing turnovers without conceding them. Whoever gets the right side of the referee at the ruck is going to be kicking to the corner all afternoon, and whoever gets the wrong side is going to be defending their line. It would not surprise me at all if the penalty count ends up telling you the result.
Where the Wallabies can hurt this Springbok side.
I would not be doing my job if I only wrote about what the Boks will do to Australia, because there are four things in the Springbok team sheet that the Wallabies will have circled.
New combinations.
Thirteen changes means a front row that has not scrummed together in a Test, a lineout throwing to different jumpers, a nine and ten who have not started together, and a back three that has not defended a kick together. The Wallabies’ best attacking weapon this year has been the quick tap penalty: four tries from it, more than any side I have analysed. Against a defensive line that is still learning each other’s triggers, a tap penalty in the first twenty minutes is exactly what any coaching staff would have Australia looking for.
The restart.
The Springboks’ weakest area in the New Zealand series was the restart in both directions: seven of their own kick-offs were errors, five of them short restarts, and they dropped nine of the 37 restart catches they had to take. Australia kicked 42 restarts this year with two errors. After every score in Perth, the next thirty seconds are a genuine possession contest, and the newer Springbok side is the one with more to prove there.
Edge and cover defence.
Against New Zealand the Springboks missed 23 per cent of their edge tackles and 37 per cent of their cover tackles once the line was broken. I wrote at the time that this is the price of the way the Boks defend, with that line speed and that ferocity, and that the coaches are surely happy to pay it. But Jorgensen and Potter are exactly the type of runners who profit from it, and Suaalii is a big man to have to cover tackle when he has got outside you. This Springbok back line has less experience of defending together than the one that played the All Blacks, and that is where the Wallabies will look to profit.
The bench, or rather the timing of it.
Look at the Springbok replacements: Marx, Nche, Louw, de Jager, Wiese, van den Berg, Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Horn. That is close to the forward pack and half-back pairing that beat New Zealand, waiting for the fiftieth minute. Australia’s numbers this year say they score most of their points in the first half and fade after the break; they scored seven and five second- half points in their two defeats. The Wallabies will know that the game they can win is the game they are ahead in when the Bok bench comes on, and that means their first forty minutes have to be their best forty of the year.
The Wallaby team, as best I can guess it.
Australia name their side after this goes up, so what follows is an educated guess built on who has started for them over the last six Tests, and it comes with the obvious caveat.
My suspicion is that Les Kiss does the opposite of what Rassie has done, for the simple reason that he does not have the luxury. Australia are not five deep. A coach who is unbeaten with a settled group, Ryan Lonergan at nine in every Test this year, Tom Wright at fullback and Max Jorgensen on the wing in six of seven, Josh Canham and Harry Wilson in five of the last six, has every reason to keep it settled.
Continuity is the one advantage the Wallabies can give themselves against a Springbok side full of new combinations, and I would expect them to take it.
On that basis I would expect something close to this: Angus Bell and Allan Alaalatoa or Taniela Tupou either side of the hooker, Canham and Jeremy Williams in the second row, Valetini, McReight and Wilson in the back row with Tizzano in the frame, Lonergan at nine, Len Ikitau or Hunter Paisami at twelve, Suaalii at thirteen, Potter and Jorgensen on the wings and Wright at fullback.
The one genuine question is ten, where Carter Gordon went for scans after Mendoza and Ben Donaldson and Declan Meredith have both started this year. If I am wrong on the names, the shape will still hold, and the shape is the point.
What I will be watching.
The fifth scrum. Not the first, because front rows feel each other out. By the fifth, the referee has a picture in his head and one of these two packs owns it.
Herschel Jantjies. Five years between Test starts is a long time in a scrum-half’s life, and his kicking game, his box kick and his decision at the base, will decide whether the Boks can make this the aerial contest they want.
Andre Esterhuizen as captain, and specifically what he does with the first kickable penalty inside the Wallaby half. If the Springbok decision-making with Pollard on the field is the same as it was with Kolisi, the pattern of the New Zealand series holds. If it is not, that is worth knowing too.
The first tap penalty Australia take. It will tell you how ready the new Springbok defensive line is.
The penalty count at half-time, and where on the field those penalties were given, because that is the contest inside the contest.
And the scoreboard at the fiftieth minute, because that is when the Springbok bench comes on and the question my friend asked gets its answer either way.
A last word.
I am not going to predict a result, because I never do and because a Wallaby side unbeaten in five, at home, with a set-piece coach and a back three like this one, deserves more respect than a prediction. South Africa are the best team in the world and they are not sending a weak team; they are sending a team of players who have earned the right to be tested. That is not the same thing.
What I will say is that this is a far more interesting Test match than the team sheet suggested when it landed on Tuesday. Rassie has turned what could have been a quiet one-off Test between two big blocks of the season into an audition with the stakes turned up, against an opponent good enough to make it count.
My friend was right. He has made it meaningful.
GG
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