Steve Hansen spotted a Springboks weakness then backed off

The former All Blacks coach found a crack in the world’s number one side. Then he spent the next two minutes filling it back in.

Former All Blacks head coach Steve Hansen says South Africa will be at their most vulnerable point of the four-match series at Ellis Park on Saturday — and then, within the same answer, argues himself into calling the first Test too close to predict. His case for the weakness is cohesion rather than quality: injuries, a squad that has not played together for a stretch, and a last outing in Argentina without a large part of the front-line side. His case against it is that they are at home, and they are number one in the world.

Springboks: “At its most vulnerable”

Speaking on the Rugby Unity podcast alongside Ewen McKenzie, Hansen was direct about the opening.

South Africa will be at its most vulnerable in this game, because they haven’t played together for a while.

He listed two causes: injuries, and no meaningful game time beyond the Test in Argentina, where South Africa left out a good number of their top-liners.

The week has since supplied him with more evidence. There is doubt over the fitness of captain Siya Kolisi, with flanker Pieter-Steph du Toit reported as the likely stand-in skipper if he does not make it. Losing a captain in the week of a series opener is precisely the kind of disruption Hansen was describing.

The second problem: too many good players

McKenzie had raised the sheer volume of selection options available to Rassie Erasmus. Hansen picked the point up and turned it into a warning.

Sometimes that can be off-putting, because you get too bloody sneaky and you can bugger yourself up.

He was not being dismissive about the squad. Quite the opposite: “They have a truckload of them. They can pick whoever they want, really. As good a depth as I’ve ever seen in my time watching the game.”

But depth cuts both ways. “It does make it harder, because you’ve got to get it right. You can be too clever.”

What he will be reading on Thursday’s teamsheet is not the names but the pairings — whether the combinations are right, and whether the selections match what South Africa are actually trying to play.

Set that beside the cohesion problem and the two compound each other. A side short on time together is already carrying a cohesion debt. A selector with unlimited options, picking into that gap, can widen it. The risk is not that Erasmus picks bad players. It is that he picks a combination that has never been a combination.

What the All Blacks have banked

While South Africa have been apart, New Zealand have had three weeks of contact rugby against the Stormers, the Sharks and the Bulls. Hansen’s point is that matches you expect to win are the useful ones.

You’re practising the things you want to be able to do to a really high level at Test level — but you’re practising against opposition that want to rip your head off.

He also reckons the selection has been deliberate rather than rotational: “You can see they’re selecting combinations rather than a straight-out Test team.” Three weeks of building partnerships against three weeks of not playing.

Then he talked himself out of it

Here is the part that gets left out when the “most vulnerable” line gets clipped and posted on its own.

Hansen followed the logic to its obvious end — “You would imagine it’s advantage New Zealand because of that” — and then immediately stopped himself. “But then you take into account that it’s home, and you’re playing the number one team in the world.”

He called it a good encounter and left it there. No prediction, no scoreline, no lean.

He is also under no illusions about what is coming.

The South Africans are going to come out and want to be really, really physical. Slow the game down, and then they’ll try and speed it up when they bring on their reserves with the big forwards coming out, and then say, okay, let’s go to another gear.

Which reframes the whole thing. Hansen has not identified a Springboks collapse. He has identified an 80-minute window in which an undercooked South Africa might be caught before the bench arrives — and then noted that Ellis Park and the world rankings may well close it anyway.

Why the Thursday team announcement changes nothing

Erasmus has broken his own pattern. Having named his matchday 23 on Mondays and Tuesdays for most of 2026, he is holding the Ellis Park side until Thursday.

Asked whether he would announce early or late in the same position, Hansen laughed it off.

Well, you’ll know anyway. He employs people who pick up the rubbish and stuff. We’re all watching. Don’t worry about that — you’ll know the team.

From a man who spent years on the other side of this fixture, that is a useful corrective to the mind-games framing. Test rugby at this level does not have secrets. It has an announcement schedule.

South Africa v New Zealand: first Test details

If Hansen is right that Saturday is South Africa’s least settled week, they should be visibly tighter by Cape Town. Which means whatever New Zealand are going to take from this series, the best chance of taking it arrives at 5.10pm on Saturday and does not come back.

Frequently asked questions

What did Steve Hansen say about the Springboks?

That South Africa will be at their most vulnerable of the series in the Ellis Park opener, because injuries and a lack of game time have left the side short of time together.

Does Hansen think New Zealand will win at Ellis Park?

No. He said the circumstances suggest an advantage to New Zealand, then weighed that against home advantage and South Africa’s world number one ranking, and declined to predict a result.

When does Rassie Erasmus name his Springboks team?

Thursday, later than the Monday and Tuesday announcements he has used for most of 2026.

Who is refereeing the Ellis Park first Test?

Matthew Carley of the RFU, with Karl Dickson and Nika Amashukeli as assistants and Mike Adamson on TMO.