“I’m not going to sugarcoat it.” The Springboks All Blacks flight out of Johannesburg carried two squads who had spent three weekends trying to knock each other over. Jasper Wiese was on it, and when he was asked what the mood had been like on board, he gave the answer nobody in a media manager’s chair wants to hear.
One aircraft. Two squads who had been hitting each other since late August. Everybody on board knew who had won the last two.
Dave Rennie joked before the trip that somebody was going to be grumpy boarding that plane. He was right, and it was not the half of it. South Africa had won 29-24 at FNB Stadium to lead the series 2-1, and the two squads flew to the United States together the following day.
Jasper Wiese, the Springboks number eight, was speaking at his team’s media session on Tuesday 8 September, four days before South Africa play New Zealand at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore in the fourth and final Test of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry. A reporter asked him what it had actually been like up there. Whether there was any chat about the game.
“Yeah, I don’t think there was a lot of chat obviously. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I don’t think there was a lot of chat. Maybe I was at the back of the plane, so I wasn’t talking to any of them, but yeah, you can think how they feel on that flight.”
Nobody said much. Which is the story. So what does a cabin that quiet tell you: that the All Blacks are finished, or that they are about to be a problem?
He answered that later in the same session, and not in the part anybody clipped. It came out in a question about painkillers.
What the Springboks All Blacks flight was really telling him
He was still answering the same question when he went further.
“It would have been vice versa if we were in their position. How desperate they’re going to be in this last game. So, yeah, I think that’s something that we know is coming.”
Then, circling back on himself:
“And, yeah, as I said, I don’t think it was too, too friendly on that flight, but we know how much it means to them as well. It’s not just that us that’s in the competition. It’s them as well, and I think they’re going to come out guns blazing this weekend.”
It is a player describing a silence and hearing a threat in it. He sat in an aeroplane full of men who cannot win this series. Every one of them can still stop South Africa winning it.
A squad that has just gone 2-1 up does not usually spend its press conference talking about how dangerous the beaten side is. This one did.
He would not take the bait on Ardie Savea either
Ardie Savea did not travel to the United States at all. The New Zealand captain went off inside the first half in Soweto and New Zealand later confirmed the dislocated shoulder when they named a 36-man squad for Baltimore without him. That hands every South African supporter a comfortable story. The All Blacks are missing their best forward, so the hard part is done.
Wiese was offered that story directly. He was asked how Savea’s absence changes the preparation for the loose forward battle.
“Obviously Ardie is a massive pillar in their team and obviously the captain that was named at the start of the series, but I don’t think our preparation changes much.”
“The other loose forwards that are there, in my experience, are just as experienced as he is and have played in big games as well. So I think… I don’t think our preparation changes a lot, just we give our opponents as much respect as possible and we respect every loose forward that plays there as well. And I think in big games those guys will step up as well. So I think the same respect goes whether he plays or not, for every opponent we play against.”
He never names a replacement. The nearest he comes to giving anything away is the word “much”. New Zealand had not named their side when he spoke, so he is answering a hypothetical, and he still refuses to price the absence in.
It is the same posture he took about the flight, and he holds it for a reason that turns up two answers later.
Read also: New Zealand still have to find a loose forward to fill that hole, and the panel’s preferred scrum fix has already flown home.
Painkillers on Sunday, and the body going again on Monday
The same session put a number to what Wiese has been doing since the middle of August. A reporter told him he had made about 38 carries across the series, roughly twelve or thirteen a game, almost all of it into the teeth of the contact, and asked how the body feels afterwards.
“After a game, always sore, but take a few painkillers on the Sunday and get the body going again on the Monday and then we rinse and repeat the week again.”
He said it the way most people describe a commute. Earlier he had used the same flat register about the job itself.
“Sometimes you’re getting dominated and sometimes you dominate. You’re not going to win every contact point.”
By the time Wiese and forwards coach Deon Davids fronted the media, the Springboks had held one field session all week. South Africa are about to ask for that workload a fourth straight time, against a side that has to win or go home with nothing.
What to watch on Saturday
Watch the first three collisions after the kick-off, and watch which side arrives second. South Africa lost the first hour at Ellis Park and were beaten by 17. They led in Cape Town and had to survive the finish to win by seven. Soweto went to the last play and five points.
Opening exchanges have decided nothing in this series, which is exactly why the first ones on Saturday matter. This is the Test where a fast start has to hold.
Read next: if this still looks close to you, the raw numbers say something stranger: New Zealand have outscored South Africa across the three Tests and are still behind.
Your turn
Two ways to hear that answer. Either Wiese was being straight about a hostile cabin and a dangerous opponent, or a squad 2-1 up has been told to talk the underdog into the room because complacency is the only thing left that can beat them. One of those is honesty. The other is management.
Pick one in the comments before the teams are named on Thursday: Wiese was being straight, or Wiese is running the complacency line. Whichever way it goes, the first three collisions on Saturday will settle it faster than the argument will.
