Six years of Springbok brains trust plotting and planning has brought them to this moment.
The Rugby World Cup (RWC) quarterfinals are upon us and on Friday the Boks will name a team they hope will see off the challenge of the home nation in a knockout match of thunderous dimensions on Sunday.
If their success in Japan was achieved on the fly, the planning for this RWC has been long in the making. When the duration of the Rassie Erasmus’s initial contract was revealed almost six years ago, Bok fans required smelling salts.
Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber have been meticulous and every detail you can possibly imagine would have entered their thought process.
They will throw all of Springbok rugby’s might at France in an expectant Stade de France on Sunday, but there is the prospect — given the slimness of the margins at this level — that they may come up short.
That of course is a prospect Bok fans will find far too ghastly to contemplate, yet is a reality they may be required to come to grips with.
Let’s for a moment deal with the horror of an early Bok exit. Should the defending champions fail to make it past France, it would mirror the joint worst performances of a Springbok team at a RWC in 2003 and 2011. But to bracket the current Bok group with Rudolf Straeuli’s misfiring mob of ’03 would be doing the Erasmus/Nienaber era a tremendous disservice. Sure, the team travelled to the 2011 instalment as defending champions, but their coaches looked vastly different.
Unlike the class of ’03 that first had to get out of the pits of Kamp Staaldraad, the team that travelled to France this year was one that winged their way here with an air of real expectation.
Failure to reach the semifinals of this tournament will be hugely deflating for Mzansi and what it has come to expect of the Boks. Under Erasmus and Nienaber this team has scaled rugby’s most significant peaks.
How would Erasmus, who was the darling of the nation in the wake of the 2019 triumph, measure up in the public’s estimation? To what degree will his stock dip, or is the juggernaut that was created in Chasing the Sun impervious to the result of a one-off match?
Erasmus has tapped into the national psyche perhaps like no other national coach. Of course he understands the game like only few others do, but it has been his ability to adjust to the beat of the nation’s heart that has set him apart. Surely a one-off result cannot dislodge him from the nation’s ticker?
Erasmus has tapped into the national psyche perhaps like no other national coach. Of course he understands the game like only few others do, but it has been his ability to adjust to the beat of the nation’s heart that has set him apart
It is, however, different for Nienaber, who is more of a box ticker. He doesn’t deal with matters of the heart. Sure, he has been part of Springbok rugby’s success story over the last number of years but he has had to do so from the position of trusty lieutenant. To be fair, while at the Boks he did not covet higher office.
The glory has fallen to Erasmus and even after Nienaber was appointed Springbok head coach, a large chunk of fans failed to make the mental adjustment.
His legacy is far more tenuous. That he will leave the Bok position for one with Leinster after the RWC doesn’t so much complicate matters as make him more expendable in Bok fans’ collective mind.
While Erasmus understands what it takes to put a spring in the Bok faithful’s step, Nienaber’s focus simply is to make the Boks better.
He brought a clear, perhaps cold, analytical approach to the job and it has served the Boks well, as it allowed Erasmus to deal with the touchy-feely elements of being at the helm of a national brand.
An undesirable result on Sunday will of course have wider consideration. Whether they win the Webb Ellis Cup or not, the Springboks down the line will have to appoint a new coach.
How does a quarterfinal exit affect the succession plans that are in place for potentially Mzwandile Stick and Deon Davids?
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