The Rugby Championship, 2025, Week 1

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This year’s Rugby Championship starts with back-to-back matches in South Africa and Argentina, with the Wallabies and All Blacks visiting respectively. Smart money would suggest that the Bokke and the ABs should win both matches, the Bokke a bit more comfortably being at home.

South Africa v Australia

For the first 25 minutes, the Bokke looked unplayable. They roared out to a 22-0 lead and everything they did looked brilliant, everything the Australians attempted looked lacklustre, more a case of green behind the ears and fool's gold than pride in the G&G jersey.

Even after Australia scored, making it 22-5 after 28 minutes, and until half-time, it felt like the Wallabies were having a good 15 minutes but the Bokke would regroup and kick on in the second half. That didn’t happen. The substitutes didn’t improve things for the Bokke either, the Wallabies defence was massive, their attack was potent, and whilst they had some luck: two intercept tries - good defensive pressure but still an element of luck - and the Wallabies ran out 38-22 winners, their first victory over SA in SA in 16 years and their first at Ellis Park in 62 years!

And yes, if you were paying attention, SA scored all their points in the opening 23 minutes. Australia scored all of theirs from the 28th minute onwards. Just two completely different parts of the match.

The silence at the end of the match was glorious to anyone who isn’t a Springbok fan. The look on Rassie's face even better. He ended up describing their performance as dogshit, which overall, feels harsh, but for their second half, is not unreasonable.

There are two takes on this match, and I think this is a case of a bit column A and a bit of column B. In column A we have Australia withstanding an early onslaught and finding it within them to fight back and win, win well, against the (former) number one side and current World Cup holders. That is impressive, coming back from 22-0 down against anyone is hard, but against the Bokke at Ellis Park? Kudos to them. In column B we have a Bokke team that is not working. Some of the senior players have moved beyond experienced into being old, that ability to raise their contributions and change the game when it’s most needed is no longer there. At the same time, although they’re better than Ireland in this regard, with younger players blooded all over the squad, the team doesn’t seem to work together. When it’s all going well, everything works nicely, but when there are problems they don’t know how to solve them.

Thanks to losing by more than 12 points to a team so far below them on the ladder, SA will fall to third place in the rankings. Such a shame.

The Wallabies will be buoyed by this result. There are things to work on but overall this was a great game for them. The Bokke have a lot to do. They will bounce back eventually, can they do it by next week?

Argentina v New Zealand

This match was more like a traditional game with the scoring intermingled and also went more to form. New Zealand attacked and scored, eventually opening up a 10-point lead. Argentina fought back to 10-7, then NZ took control running in three more tries in the first half, including two in the last five minutes, opening up a 24-10 lead.

The AB were completely dominant throughout most of this half, earning scrum penalties at will, winning all the collisions and making it look easy.

In the second half, Argentina responded and scored a couple of tries, one very nice one that will have people doing tackle practice, another well worked one. However, los Pumas couldn’t maintain their lift, the AB replacements started to settle down and gel into the team properly and they scored two late tries. Honestly it could have been more, they finished strongly and were looking great.

Both sides have positives to take from this match, but also things to work on. But overall that’s ok, both coaches will be reasonably happy.

Next Week

We have repeats of these matches. Same times and locations. I can’t see the Pumas improving enough to win. I would have said the Bokke would win comfortably but I would have said that before yesterday too. Rassie has waved his magic wand and made no less than 10 changes, a few injury-enforced, but questions linger. Is this actually a stronger team? The loss of PSDT in particular has people saying no…

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