Meet the figure behind Springbok Women's forward domination

Who can forget Springbok Women’s epic 2025 World Cup journey? From also-rans in 2022 to dismantling one of the world’s top ten sides to make the quarter-finals for the first time and making the mighty Black Ferns question themselves and their game plan in the semis to go in at half-time drawing?

On the women’s side of the game in South Africa, a hugely influential figure sits behind Swys de Bruin driving standards: Laurian Johannes-Haupt.

Joining the Springbok Women as an assistant coach in 2023 after retiring from the Springbok jersey herself almost a decade earlier, her résumé included two Women’s Premier Division titles with Western Province, a time as Junior Springbok Women’s coach, and a place on the coveted World Rugby Gallagher Coaching Internship Programme.

And where has she honed her craft? One only needs to ask what made the Springboks stand out on the pitch during the Women’s World Cup, what was it that put fear into the hearts of their opponents? One of the Springbok Women’s greatest strengths? A dominant, physical, technically precise scrum that has become a trademark of their game plan.

Speaking to Leezil Hendricks at Rugby365, Johannes-Haupt admitted that transforming the scrum into a weapon didn’t come without early challenges.

“In the men’s game, scrumming is that pure physical, dominant thing you want to do – they love scrumming,” she said. “So unfortunately, I had to get the girls to love scrumming because it’s not naturally something you want to go into.”

“I usually dangle a little carrot – listen, if you give me five perfect scrums, we’re done with it. You don’t have to do number six or number seven. Sometimes they win, sometimes they don’t, because immediately if one of the scrums collapses, we have to go to six and seven. So the harder they work in the process, the better the outcome.

“Just getting them to love what they’re doing was our first objective, and the next thing is knowing that we can’t do it as individuals – we must do it as a pack. You need to stick in there for the pack, because we’re going to win penalties so that we can kick to the corner, and we can move for the tries. It’s a whole group effort and everybody has bought into the plan.”

That collective mentality has become a hallmark of the Bok Women and their pièce de résistance.

“Our forward pack is our superpower,” Johannes-Haupt explained to R365. “It is so dominant and physical that other countries around the world are clearly intimidated by it, and they know they need to front up and really be able to battle us there. Because you know, anything can happen on any given day – the Springbok Women could be taking on one of the world’s best and beating them because of a very dominant forward pack.”

The Springbok Women have assembled for a week-long alignment camp in Stellenbosch, with head coach Swys de Bruin calling up 42 players – including 21 World Cup campaigners.

The 2025 season has already marked a turning point for the women’s game in South Africa, with the promise of the launch of a Women’s Super Rugby League set for the middle of next year with professional contracts, as well as the revamped WXV competition, and a two-Test series against the USA to look forward to. Watch this space.