South Africa’s willingness to select overseas-based players for the national team was a decision that halted the Springboks’ free-fall to a professional era low ranking of seventh. It surely must be a matter of when the All Blacks go the same way.
When Ireland hammered the Springboks 38-3 in Dublin in 2017, some big-name Springboks watched from their home couches, from the stands or from a private suite.
Amateur idealism and romance took a beating from the reality that Test rugby should be an occasion in which a country’s best players test themselves against the best of another country.
I never felt Allister Coetzee should have been appointed as the Springboks coach, but not being able to pick the best South African players based overseas meant he started in a straitjacket from which there would be no escape.
Ireland, ranked two in the world, against the Springboks, World Cup winners, world champions and No 1 in the world, would not have had the intensity, the edge or the marketing hype if players of the quality of Pieter-Steph du Toit, Siya Kolisi, Kwagga Smith, Franco Mostert, Faf de Klerk, Handré Pollard and Cheslin Kolbe were ineligible on the grounds that they invested their playing talents in the most lucrative club leagues in the sport.
Rassie Erasmus, as coach of the Springboks, was non-negotiable on his return to South Africa from Ireland in 2017 that for the Boks to be resurrected then there could be no restriction on selection.
The results, in the past six years, vindicated every decision made to ensure the best Springboks are available, in selection to Erasmus and between 2019 and 2023 head coach, Jacques Nienaber.
Several of those overseas-based Boks from 2018 have returned to South Africa and others have gone overseas to improve their commercial value and add to their skill sets as rugby players and growth as people.
I never felt Allister Coetzee should have been appointed as the Springboks coach, but not being able to pick the best South African players based overseas meant he started in a straitjacket from which there would be no escape.
All Blacks coach Scott Robertson has already challenged, by way of introducing it as a public discussion, the reality of considering overseas-based New Zealanders for the All Blacks.
Richie Mo’unga, the best New Zealand No 10, watched from the stands as New Zealand edged England by a point in Dunedin. Sitting next to him was blindside flanker Shannon Frizell. Both took up Japanese club contracts after the World Cup and both are ineligible for the All Blacks. Both should have been on that field if the sport was being true to ‘best plays best’.
The All Blacks don’t have a like-for-like replacement for this duo, but still an amateur era driven executive dismisses the notion that you pick the best, regardless of geographics. The belief that players must choose loyalty to the black jersey and silver fern over financial wellbeing is absurd.
The reality is that the core of the All Blacks squad would still be from those playing in New Zealand, but a handful of world-class overseas-based players is the difference between being one and four, or as South Africa found out in 2017, one and seven in the world rankings.
Fortunately, in Durban it is best against best for the Boks and Ireland.
Kolisi, imposing and powerful in his 49 minutes against Ireland in Pretoria, leads an unchanged Boks match 23 that is favoured to win the Test and complete a 2-0 series win against an Ireland team that is now missing six of the starting XV that met the Boks in Paris in World Cup pool play.
Ireland’s 9, 10 and 12 from the World Cup are absent because of retirement and injury, their best hooker is injured and their captain starts from the bench.
They remain a very good side and their best available do justice to the jersey and their world ranking.
Erasmus’s respect for Ireland is emphasised with his unchanged match 23 selection, but it is also a respect for the occasion and for the sell-out audience who have invested financially and emotionally in seeing the best Boks play the best Ireland.
Those paying supporters wearing black in the stands at Eden Park in Auckland on Saturday must feel short-changed with a selection policy that forces the second best player to take the field and the best player to take his seat in the grand stand.
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