Superb year for the Springboks raises expectations for the future

Despite World Rugby thinking otherwise, as the Springboks only picked up one out of the three major awards they were nominated for at the 2024 World Rugby Awards, it has been a fantastic season for the world champions of 2019 and 2023.

Pieter-Steph du Toit was deservedly named Player of the Year, although Eben Etzebeth and Cheslin Kolbe would have been fully deserving as well, while exciting budding utility star Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu was a nominee in the Breakthrough Player of the Year category. Unfortunately he missed out to Wallace Sititi of New Zealand, while Bok boss Rassie Erasmus was overlooked for the Coach of the Year award.

Where the Boks flexed their muscle however was the World Rugby team of the year, which saw Du Toit, Etzebeth, Kolbe, Ox Nche, Malcolm Marx, Damian de Allende and Jesse Kriel take up seven spots, with Ireland filling four, the All Blacks three and one from Argentina rounding out the 15.

This mirrored the Boks’ dominance over a year where they won 11 out of 13 games, although it could have easily been a full house of wins, had they not slipped up in allowing a last second drop goal to give Ireland a one point win, and missing numerous chances in a one point loss against Argentina.

The most pleasing and incredible thing about the Boks’ year was their huge rotation policy, that saw them use 51 players over their 13 games, as they look to build depth heading towards the 2027 World Cup in Australia.

New Boks

That included 12 players making their debuts this season, namely Edwill van der Merwe, Ben-Jason Dixon, Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Jordan Hendrikse, Morne van den Berg, Johan Grobbelaar, Ruan Venter, Quan Horn, Phepsi Bhutelezi, Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Andre-Hugo Venter and Cameron Hanekom.

Almost for every match the Boks made numerous changes to their team, and despite the disruptions this caused, they still played more than well enough to win most of their games comfortably.

This is especially pleasing as it was the Boks’ inconsistency between their World Cup triumphs in 2019 and 2023 that frustrated fans and pundits, as they slipped up in many games that they shouldn’t have.

However, this year that didn’t happen and hopefully this will be a sign of things to come as the depth continues to grow and players become more experienced in the setup.

Rugby Championship

Arguably the team’s crowning moment was dominating the Rugby Championship, with them doing the double over the All Blacks in SA, thumping the Wallabies twice down under, and crushing Argentina in Mbombela to claim the title in style.

Another pleasing moment was Etzebeth becoming the most capped Bok of all time, passing Victor Matfield’s previous cap record of 127, and with him now on 131 caps he will likely be targeting the 150 mark that has only been breached twice.

Overall, the double World Champs have raised the bar this year, and there will now be even higher expectations placed on them for next year.