Asked what a 3-1 series over the All Blacks meant to him, the Springboks head coach called it “a fantastic concept, as long as we don’t drop some of our friends who backed us in the past”. SuperSport’s Matt Pearce had the camera in the changing room.
Rassie Erasmus had just won the first Springboks series against New Zealand in 50 years, and the first thing he wanted to talk about was Argentina and Australia.
“Firstly, I think, you know, Argentina and Australia, I just never want us to leave them alone, because they’ve been always good to us, in Rugby Championships and Tri-Nations and everything. So hope somewhere that gets sorted out.”
The question had been about him. What a 3-1 series over the All Blacks meant to a head coach with two World Cups already behind him.
He was in the changing room on Saturday 12 September, the inaugural Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry won and his 100th Test in charge over. He opened with the two countries the series had pushed out of the calendar.
He did not say what “sorted out” would look like. The calendar has already answered for him, and the answer has a date on it. Is he right to put a condition on his own union’s showpiece? Argue it below, then read what the condition costs in 2030.
The Rugby Championship friends Erasmus will not leave alone
There was no Rugby Championship this year. SANZAAR, the body that runs it, confirmed last October that the tournament returns in 2027, 2028 and 2029 and pauses in 2026 and 2030, so South Africa and New Zealand can play each other four times instead.
Australia and Argentina filled the gap with each other. Former Wallabies wing Drew Mitchell said that series did not count, and Australia won it with one victory and a draw.
George Gregan, 139 caps for Australia and a World Cup winner in 1999, put the objection in one sentence when SANZAAR announced the calendar. “Can you imagine the Six Nations being postponed a year because [England] decide they want to play France instead?” He called the Rugby Championship “the Southern Hemisphere’s Six Nations”.
Ten months later the coach who gained most from the pause said this.
“But then, yes, we are proud of South Africa and all the people out here, and just how they supported us, in Soweto and in Cape Town and Joburg. We’re proud that we could win for them, although it was by small margins. So I think it’s a fantastic concept, as long as we don’t drop some of our friends who backed us in the past.”
And the condition already has two fixtures behind it. South Africa beat Argentina 17-10 in Buenos Aires in August, and the next Springboks Test is against Australia at Optus Stadium in Perth on Sunday 27 September, for the Mandela Challenge Plate, the trophy the two sides play for. This year is covered. 2030 is not, and Erasmus described why without meaning to.
He was glad New Zealand toured first
Asked what the series had meant to him, he went back to the day it was proposed.
“I was wondering, are we going to tour there first, or [are] they going to come and tour with us first, before the World Cups. I was very happy when they were going to tour here first, because it must have been a gruelling tour: midweek games, and then you play four Test matches against us, three at home. So well done to New Zealand… I think the margins is this [holds his thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart]. I think all of us know.”
Winning coaches do not usually say the draw suited them. The fixture list says he is right.
New Zealand played four provincial games in under three weeks, two of them on a Tuesday, then four Tests, three in South Africa, then a flight across the Atlantic for the fourth. Nine All Blacks went home injured before the series was over, four of them before the first Test. South Africa’s only trip before Baltimore was to Buenos Aires in August. The first three Tests were at home.
That gap between finger and thumb was his answer. An hour earlier at the press conference he would not call the Springboks the better team and put the margin at very small. Two rooms in one night, and the same finger-width.
Mzwandile Stick, a Springboks assistant coach since 2018 with two World Cups on that staff, said it about the losers: “The All Blacks never give up, they keep on coming back. You can see they’re in a good space now as a team.”
Read also: Dave Rennie’s version of the same numbers, and why he wanted a spare set of comms.
2030 is when “sorted out” gets a date
Erasmus wondered aloud which side would tour first. The other half is already fixed. In 2030 the Springboks tour New Zealand, their first full tour there since 1994, and SANZAAR has already paused the Rugby Championship for it.
Everything he listed as the reason the draw favoured South Africa now runs the other way: midweek games against provincial sides, and four Tests with three of them away. Tony Brown, the Springboks attack coach, joins the All Blacks staff in 2028 on a two-year deal announced in June. He sees the same thing coming from the other side.
“Obviously we lost the first one, but massive effort for the lads to come back and win the next three and win the series… it’s only going to get stronger and stronger, the rivalry. So when the Springboks go to New Zealand, it’s going to be another tough battle.”
If the concept runs again in 2030 in the shape it ran this year, SANZAAR leaves the two friends alone a second time and the Springboks take the gruelling half.
Gregan’s alternative in November was to play the series inside the Rugby Championship window rather than instead of it, with a fourth Test in the UK. In September the winning coach said the friends must not be dropped. Same sentence, opposite ends of the argument.
This site’s position: keep the concept, and build the 2030 edition inside a Rugby Championship year rather than in place of one. SANZAAR has four years.
Four weeks against one team, and what the coaches could not change
Jesse Kriel, 94 caps, was asked about the concept and answered about the cost. “Four Tests against the same team. I think it’s mentally, it’s physically, it’s taxing,” he said. Eben Etzebeth, 146 caps, shortened it: “It’s tough. It’s tough on the bodies.”
Brown coached the attack that scored six tries on Saturday. He won 18 caps at fly-half for New Zealand between 1999 and 2001 and has run the Springboks attack since 2024. He was asked what a four-Test series against one opponent does to a coaching group.
“You put a lot of work in before the series and you get all your plans organised, and then you obviously coach the boys to do the job right… like you say, you can’t change too much. The boys just got to go out there and do battle, and they did.”
The plan was set before Ellis Park and lost there, 33-16.
For the fourth Test Erasmus changed two starters, Damian Willemse for the injured Cheslin Kolbe and Morné van den Berg for Cobus Reinach, and left the pack alone. The variable was the bench. Baltimore was 29-21 on 65 minutes and finished 43-28, with Kurt-Lee Arendse scoring on 72 and Cameron Hanekom on 78.
Manie Libbok came on for Willemse on 57 minutes and converted both of those tries.
Nick Mallett ranked him first of the three last week. Libbok put the reason in one sentence. “Obviously the cohesion was there, and that helped a lot, just obviously playing with the combinations game after game after game,” he said. “In crunch times, in high-pressure situations, for us obviously playing together, we were really calm and connected as well.”
So watch the last 25 minutes of a series against one opponent, not the first 55. Kriel called it “finding those marginal gains”. Not a new shape. A better finish.
Fifty years, not thirty
Kriel got the history slightly wrong and undersold it. “Obviously the Springboks haven’t won a series against New Zealand in 30 years, if I’m not mistaken,” he said.
The last series between the two was the 1996 All Blacks tour, which New Zealand won 2-1. The last time South Africa won one was 1976. That one also finished 3-1, decided 15-14 at Ellis Park on 18 September, a date that turns 50 on Friday.
That tour put Māori and Samoan All Blacks into apartheid South Africa as “honorary whites”, and 21 African nations boycotted the Montreal Olympics because New Zealand had gone. Erasmus was three. Nobody who played on Saturday was born.
Etzebeth had the year right. “I think the last series was in ’96, 30 years later… So this 3-1 series victory against the All Blacks, it’s unbelievable,” he said. Before the match he had rated Saturday above his two World Cup medals. Afterwards, asked whether the squad had built momentum after going into what Erasmus called knockout mode, he explained the comeback in a way nobody else in the room did.
“I think we’ve been in a situation before with the Lions. We’ve lost the pool game in both World Cups, went on to win. So we said we’ve been here before. We can’t afford to slip up again. And I think Rassie and his team, they always keep us on our toes, and the guys take ownership.”
The list has four entries.
| Campaign | First match | What followed |
|---|---|---|
| World Cup 2019 | Lost 23-13 to New Zealand, Yokohama | Won the World Cup |
| Lions series 2021 | Lost 22-17, Cape Town | Won the series 2-1 |
| World Cup 2023 | Lost 13-8 to Ireland, Paris | Won the World Cup |
| Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry 2026 | Lost 33-16, Ellis Park | Won the series 3-1 |
Source: match records, RNZ, lionsrugby.com and springboks.rugby.
Four campaigns in seven years, and the first game went every time. Kriel reached for the same comparison unprompted: “It felt a bit like the Lions series, going one-nil down after the first game.” A team that loses first once has been unlucky. A team that does it four times and wins four times has a method, and Brown had already described it.
Erasmus’s last answer of the night was cut off by SuperSport’s edit. “I will one day tell my, I don’t know who, grandchildren: listen here, we were part of this great series in 2026,” he said, and the reel ended. The grandchildren will want to know whether it happened again in 2030, and who else was allowed in.
Read next:
– Springboks player ratings from Baltimore, where a 9.5 went to a scrum-half making his first start of the series.
– Richie Mo’unga says the Springboks have got better since 2023. The view from the losing changing room.
Frequently asked
What did Rassie Erasmus say about Argentina and Australia after the Baltimore Test?
That he never wants the Springboks to leave them alone, because both were always good to South Africa in the Rugby Championship and the Tri-Nations, and that he hopes it gets sorted out. He called the four-Test series a fantastic concept as long as those friends are not dropped.
Why was there no Rugby Championship in 2026?
SANZAAR paused it so South Africa and New Zealand could play Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry in the August and September window. It returns in 2027, 2028 and 2029 and pauses again in 2030, when the Springboks tour New Zealand.
When do the Springboks next play the Wallabies?
Sunday 27 September at Optus Stadium in Perth, for the Nelson Mandela Challenge Plate.
When did South Africa last win a series against New Zealand?
1976, also 3-1, with the deciding Test won 15-14 at Ellis Park on 18 September. The 1996 series, the last before this one, went to New Zealand 2-1.
Your turn: can the four-Test series and the Rugby Championship both survive?
Two ways to read Erasmus’s condition. Either the four-Test series is the best thing to happen to southern-hemisphere rugby since 1996, and Argentina and Australia can be fitted around it with a Test in Perth here and a Test in Buenos Aires there. Or a calendar that pauses the Rugby Championship twice in five years has already failed the condition, and 2030 has to be built differently. One of those is a fixture list. The other is a concept. Which is it? Settle it below.
