LONG READ Is Ireland versus South Africa a battle for the title of ‘world champions’?

Whatever happens in the climactic two-match Test series between South Africa and Ireland next month, it is fair to say there will be plenty of needle, and maybe even a few ‘afters’ to be distributed between the top two rated nations in world rugby.

Ireland started the 2023 World Cup as the No 1 ranked side globally, the Springboks entered the arena as defending world champions. The men in green were the only team to beat their counterparts from the Republic, by 13 points to eight in the ‘final’ of Pool B. But where Ireland fell at the quarter-final hurdle, as they have done so often in the past, the Bokke remained bloodied but unbowed, bullocking their way past all-comers to a repeat triumph.

That group stage defeat still rankles in South African memories, and second row Eben Etzebeth testified to that frustration in an interview with The Rugby Pod’s Jim Hamilton a few short weeks ago: “I remember what I said to you… You shake the guys’ hands, and probably 12 out of the 23 [Irish players] when I shook their hands told me, ‘See you guys in the Final’.

“We were going to play France and they were going to play New Zealand and my immediate thought was, ‘Are these guys seriously not even thinking about the All Blacks?’

“I was just like, ‘Surely they can’t [mean it]?’ I mean we would never say that because we knew we had the host nation, and we knew we had to pitch up to beat France in their backyard. Yeah, it just felt like they were just so, so confident saying things like that, ‘See you in the Final’ when you knew you had got the mighty All Blacks coming in a World Cup quarter-final.

“It’s good to be confident but you can never be arrogant in this game because that’s the thing about rugby, you can have the best season and you can have one slip-up, or one missed tackle, and a guy puts you on your arse. That is the beauty of this game – you are never on top forever.”

That is the dictionary definition of ‘needle’; knowing somewhere deep in your heart that your opponents think they have had the best of you, and that you may not have the chance to do anything about it before the end of the tournament.

At present, the odds are unquestionably shifting in favour of the Bokke. The grandest of ironies is that it is the presence of South Africa’s world cup-winning head coach at the province which supplies most of the bullets for Andy Farrell to fire, which is making it happen.

The players from those two nations – Ireland and South Africa – will still feel they are part of the best team on the planet, eight months later. They will require crystal-clear evidence, proof-positive that their antagonists are superior. Both will need a 2-0 series victory for the claim to be credible and even then, it will probably not be believed.

At present, the odds are unquestionably shifting in favour of the Bokke. The grandest of ironies is that it is the presence of South Africa’s world cup-winning head coach at the province which supplies most of the bullets for Andy Farrell to fire, which is making it happen.

Jacques Nienaber was supposed to be the final piece of the jigsaw when he arrived as the much-heralded replacement for Stuart Lancaster as Senior Coach at Leinster. The defensive mastermind would bring steel without the ball and add a winning mentality at the pointy end of competitions. In the event, the Dublin-based province lost in the European Champions Cup final to Toulouse instead of La Rochelle, and they were bundled out of the URC knockouts at the semi-final stage by Jake White’s Bulls.

Ex-Munster lock turned TV pundit Donncha O’Callaghan may have been feeling the East coast-West coast rivalry, and the ‘needle’ of provincial friction as keenly as Etzebeth, when he hit on a number of sore spots on the head in his post-match commentary on RTE:

“[Leinster] got it wrong. They got it wrong again. It’s brilliant using 50 players but when it comes to cup final rugby, you need to win it – and you need to have a team.

“And we saw this team, star-studded with internationals, and they were lost on the road because they’re not used to doing it [winning away matches]. So, that is a flaw from management,

“The attack was blunt today, but it’s been blunt all season. If you look at it, it doesn’t look connected, and it doesn’t look like there’s ownership from the key decision makers – being your  No 9 and No 10.

Leinster are one of the best-resourced teams, not only in club rugby but in world rugby, and they just have not delivered. People leave them off. Media leave them off… They need to be held accountable, not just for this performance but their performances over the last while.

Donncha O’Callaghan

“Leinster are one of the best-resourced teams, not only in club rugby but in world rugby, and they just have not delivered. People leave them off. Media leave them off… They need to be held accountable, not just for this performance but their performances over the last while.

“That will be damaging for Irish rugby. The whole of South Africa is going to jump up and say, ‘look what our Bulls team did to this national team’. We are going to pay the price on the summer tour.”

The raw stats tend to back up O’Callaghan’s claims. Leinster were ranked 3rd on defence [tries conceded] during the 2022-2023 URC under Lancaster’s stewardship, and there has been no obvious improvement one season later with Nienaber in charge. At the same time, some of the attacking stats have begun to slip: average points scored [from 32 to 29 per game], average tries [from 4.6 to 4.2], and number of rucks built [from 97 to 88]. The gains at the defensive breakdown, where opposition ruck-speed has ballooned out from 3.8 seconds per ruck in 2022-23 to a league-leading 4.2 seconds one season later, have been cancelled by a drop in offensive cleanout efficiency – an average 3.1 seconds per ruck in 2022-23 to 3.5 seconds in 2023-24.

The most attack-minded franchise in Ireland has gotten both slower and more defensive under Nienaber, and it is impossible to describe what has happened as an improvement – particularly with attack coach Andrew Goodman leaving Leinster to take up the same role with Ireland at the end of the summer.

It creates a host of thorny questions for head coach Andy Farrell. Does he persist with Simon Easterby’s softer up-and-out defensive pattern, with Nienaber’s up-and-in now ingrained in the rump of Dublin-based players? Will Ireland’s attack structure start to deteriorate like Leinster’s, without its chief architect [Lancaster] to fine tune the detail? Can any of Leinster’s would-be national No 10’s [the Byrne brothers, Ciaran Frawley or Sam Prendergast] now expected to develop into world-class game-managers in the capital city?

The recent URC semi-final against the Bulls amply pointed up the problems. Leinster’s attack from lineout, the pride of Ireland under Lancaster, went up in smoke in the harsh sunshine at Loftus Versveld:

The first phase is promising, with the ball going out to Robbie Henshaw and then bending back in on a carry over the gain-line by Dan Sheehan. Two phases later, the attacking shape has been lost: it is by no means certain whether the pass from base is directed at Josh van der Flier [in the red hat] or Ross Byrne standing nearby. Henshaw and Garry Ringrose do their best to clean up the mess but the next breakdown is under-resourced and the Bulls force a turnover scrum.

Leinster drop 1

There is another terrific run by Henshaw to set the wheels in motion, but total clarity about the target for the pass on the next play is lacking. The ball springs loose and what should be a plus for the Irish province turns into a big minus instead.
Attacking shape in general play suffered from the same absence of precision and a clear sense of purpose:

Leinster drop 2

In the first clip, Ross Byrne is flat-footed when he receives the pass from prop Andrew Porter, and Dan Sheehan has already moved past him by the time he is ready to deliver the ball to the Ireland rake. In the second, after a long break downfield by James Lowe, Leinster are in ideal shape on attack. They can utilize the full width of the field to the right with three men out of shot to the touchline, while the Bulls are in disarray on defence. Instead, the ball is taken tamely into contact and the chance evaporates in the thin Pretoria air.
The match suggested that Leinster had lost their once fine nose for attacking opportunity. In the middle of the first half, they won back two of their own high kicks successively but still found nothing better to do than kick the ball straight out of play on the third phase:

With Bulls’ full-back Willie Le Roux out of play on the other side of the field it is three-on-three if a break is made. Jimmy O’Brien has Ryan Baird and Lowe outside him for company, but the full-back only has eyes for the touchline, and putting boot to ball.

There has been a palpable degree of needle between South Africa and Ireland ever since the World Cup in 2023. The Irish were only side to beat the Springboks in that tournament, in a full-blooded encounter at the Stade de France to decide the king of pool B. The Bokke went on to claim their second consecutive World Cup victory, while Andy Farrell’s men were knocked out at the quarter-final stage.

It is likely that both nations still believe that they are best team on the planet, and that will give the two-Test series in July an added edge. But an Ireland outfit so heavily-dependent on its Leinster core-group has not been helped by the appearance of World Cup-winning coach Jacques Nienaber in Dublin. Ultimately, the structure of the defence has changed without improving, while sharpness on attack has deteriorated. It promises to be a rousing double-header, but the odds are stacked in South Africa’s favour.