Are the Springboks now a better team than when they won the World Cup?

A lot has changed in the South Africa set-up since Siya Kolisi lifted the Webb Ellis Cup in October.

A large chunk of Rassie Erasmus’ backroom staff have moved on, with the new coaching team beginning to impress their thumbprint on the Springboks, chiefly new attack coach Tony Brown who has brought far more width to their game.

With this change in style has come a change in playing personnel too, with the world champions on the foothills of creating their new squad for 2027 by introducing plenty of new faces to the Test arena over the past months.

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The Springboks are certainly different since the World Cup, but are they necessarily better than they were in 2023 when they were crowned world champions for a record fourth time?

That was the question posed by Hanyani Shimange on the latest episode of RugbyPass TV’s The Boks Office to which Springbok centurion Jean de Villiers listed the reasons why that may well be the case. Though he did not definitively say whether they are better or not, he made a compelling case.

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“I think we’ve evolved,” the former Springboks captain said on the podcast.

“There’s way more threat from an attacking point of view. You’ve got so much more variety, so defending I think is far more difficult. But we always have the capability of reverting back to our traditional strength, like we saw at the weekend with the maul. So it really does make us extremely dangerous.

“Plus, add to that the depth we have. You now go into a game – just take the flyhalf situation – you have Sacha [Feinberg-Mngomezulu], Manie [Libbok], Handre [Pollard], three totally different flyhalves that offer you something totally different. So you can even go into a game with a certain strategy and change it up halfway through the game.”