Danelle Lochner: 'We’re a much better team than the one that lost last year'

For 15 minutes between the two halves of their Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 quarter-final against New Zealand, South Africa were in dreamland.

A side that had never been in the knockouts of the game’s premier competition were all square at 10-10 with the team who had lifted the trophy more than any other. But South Africa weren’t hanging on.

They had dominated the opening 40 minutes against the Black Ferns, scoring two tries through rumbling forward play and dynamic running off the shoulder and around the corner. The maul was thrumming. The breakdown was immense. If anything, they deserved a lead.

Then reality hit them like a steamroller loose down a hill. The reigning champions scored a try a minute after the restart and dotted down five more times before the end, running away as comfortable 46-17 winners.

But the lingering sentiment from within South Africa was positive. Huge strides had been taken. Harsh but important lessons were learned. And all the players and coaching staff promised that the next time they played the Black Ferns, they’d be a more rounded, more accomplished side.

This Saturday they get their chance in a curtain-raiser for their male counterparts in Soweto in the third Test of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series.

“We can’t wait,” Danelle Lochner, who starts in the second row for the Boks, said. “It’s a massive opportunity for us. We want to show that we’re a much better team than the one that lost to New Zealand last year.”

Much of the playing group remains the same with Babalwa Latsha captaining from prop, Aseza Hele rampaging from the back of the pack and Libbie Janse van Rensburg running the show from fly-half, but there’s been a dramatic late change in the coach’s box.

Swys de Bruin, who has been credited for improving the team’s technical and tactical proficiency, has left his post as head coach. De Bruin’s departure came amid reports of a dispute with SA Rugby.

Lochner spoke to RugbyPass before this news was announced, but the evolution she describes is in many ways a testament to the work done during his tenure.

“If you watch the footage from this pack this weekend compared to the last World Cup, you’ll see a much more technical team, making a lot smarter decisions,” she said.

“We back each other, we’re more connected. That is so key, that connection. There are fewer one-off runners who get isolated. We’re playing with all 15 players on the field and not just 8-12. Everyone is hands-on going into this game.

“We’re still going to do most of the damage with our forwards. That will always be the South African way, men or women. But looking back we were too narrow against New Zealand and in general across the World Cup.

“Teams could get around us and find an edge when they had the ball and could contain us if we didn’t get that early momentum with a big carry.

“Now we want to play with more width. Our forwards are in the tramlines helping connect things. We also want to force teams to run through us around the fringe when we’re defending. I promise you that won’t be easy. We’ve had to adapt.”

Fixture

Women's Internationals

South Africa Women

04:30

5 Sep 26

New Zealand Women

All Stats and Data

That adaptation is about more than shapes on a tactics board. South Africa arrived at last year’s quarter-final liberated by the absence of expectation. They had already made history simply by reaching the last eight. Whatever happened next was a bonus.

“There’s nothing more dangerous than a team that has nothing to lose,” Lochner said. “We went into that game with a firm belief that we could actually do this, that we were capable of competing with the top teams in the world.

“I remember going into the changing room at half-time thinking, ‘Holy shit, this is quite impressive’.”

The equation has changed. South Africa are no longer satisfied simply to find themselves in the company of the elite. Their Women’s Rugby World Cup run altered perceptions outside the camp but, perhaps more importantly, shifted them within it.

“We’ve realised now that we are capable of competing where we are,” Lochner said. “If we continue the trend that we are on currently, we could be an even bigger threat to the top five. People are stepping up and owning this position that we are in.”

Expectation, then, is the price of progress. Lochner acknowledges there is more to lose this time, but describes the accompanying pressure as a “privilege”. The ambition is no longer merely to trouble New Zealand for a half, or leave with another encouraging indication of how far they have come. They want to beat them.

The setting only amplifies that ambition. FNB Stadium has staged a football World Cup final, Nelson Mandela’s memorial service and some of the most significant sporting occasions in South African history. Now the Springbok Women will run out there before the latest instalment of the country’s defining rugby rivalry.

Lochner is reluctant to frame the occasion through the men who will follow them onto the field. But she also understands what sharing their stage can provide.

“It’s a massive privilege for us to play a double-header with the men because that’s a little bit more exposure,” she said. “That’s something that we really long for. The support for the women’s game has picked up in the past couple of years.

“And the fact that it’s at FNB Stadium is a massive milestone for the women in general.”

Last year South Africa discovered they could stand toe-to-toe with the Black Ferns. For 40 extraordinary minutes, they even looked capable of toppling them. On Saturday, in front of their biggest audience yet, encouragement alone will no longer suffice.

This time, they have something to lose.