Why many Springboks fans will never give Ireland their dues

This is it. The last box that needs ticking. The final itch to scratch. The only piece of unfinished business left on the to-do list. Win in Dublin and Rassie Erasmus would have no more lands to conquer.

It wasn’t long ago that many South African rugby fans looked favourably on Ireland. There were flashpoints, of course – Ronan O’Gara’s cheeky quick-tap while John Smit’s Boks had their backs turned in 2004 remains lodged in the national memory – but for the most part, this was a relationship on the fringes of the sport’s ecosystem.

It was novel. A passing curiosity that came around only every couple of years. Between 1998 and 2016 the teams met 15 times, with the Springboks winning ten to Ireland’s five. There was little animosity. If anything, many Bok supporters considered Ireland a second-favourite team. I know I did.

Something shifted in the autumn of 2017. Joe Schmidt’s team didn’t simply beat the Springboks, they dismantled them, running up a record 38-3 score in Dublin. Erasmus and his deputy, Jacques Nienaber, were watching from the stands that day, having made the journey from Limerick where they were coaching Munster. That was the turning point. It was there that Erasmus vowed to return to South Africa and forge one of rugby’s greatest dynasties.

But for all the titles, honours and adulation that has come his way, he’s not been able to dislodge a thorn in his side. “Ireland is our bogey team” he admitted before the 2023 World Cup clash that Ireland won 13-8, their third straight win over South Africa. Erasmus would finally taste victory in a Test thanks to a 77th-minute penalty try in Pretoria in 2024, but not in a series. Ciaran Frawley’s drop-goal after the hooter in Durban a week later saw to that.

In this time the rivalry has simmered and occasionally curdled, especially online where the most jingoistic voices feel emboldened to hurl their vitriol. But beyond the noise and the ugliness, the rugby cultures of the two nations share more than either side might admit. Both rely heavily on a handful of elite schools to produce their stars, and both wrap their identity around the unifying mythology the sport provides – rugby as heritage, rugby as glue, rugby as a story bigger than the game itself.

There has also been the transfer of ideas and talent. Coaches have crossed the equator in both directions – Erasmus and Nienaber sharpening their craft in Limerick, Felix Jones and Jerry Flannery carrying Irish insight into the Springbok machine – while players like CJ Stander and Jean Kleyn have shifted allegiances entirely. The traffic hasn’t been one-way; it’s been an ongoing exchange, blending philosophies, conditioning methods, and cultural approaches that have quietly tied the two rugby nations closer together even as the rivalry intensified.

But perceptions change slowly in sport. Opinions calcify and turn to rock. And no matter how much the Irish have risen, how comprehensively they’ve outplayed South Africa in recent years, a large portion of Bok supporters simply refuse to grant them equal footing. Respect? Perhaps. But rivalry? Never. To many South Africans, there is only one nation entitled to stand opposite them on the sport’s highest spiritual plane, and that is New Zealand. Everyone else, Ireland included, remains an interloper in a two-horse mythology.

For these fans, Ireland’s ascent is treated not as an evolution but an inconvenience, an aberration that needs correcting. There is a persistent belief that the Irish are playing above their station, that their world rankings and win records are inflated, that their success is a temporary quirk in the cycle rather than a structural shift, that no team without a single appearance in a World Cup semi-final could ever be taken seriously. This is where the emotional charge of the fixture comes from: a deep-seated urge among South Africans to prove, decisively and publicly, that the Irish are not peers but pretenders.

And layered on top of that is something more combustible: the conspiratorial streak that has gripped the fringes of the Bok fanbase. Every red card, every breakdown penalty, every 50/50 call against South Africa becomes part of a larger narrative of persecution. The recent dismissals of Lood de Jager and Franco Mostert’s yellow, the officiating debates that roll endlessly through WhatsApp groups and YouTube channels – all of it feeds a sense that South Africa are forever judged by a harsher standard. For these supporters, beating Ireland isn’t just about rugby. It’s about vindication. Correction. Restoration.

Perhaps that’s why this rivalry now feels like the axis on which the sport turns. No other north-south fixture carries as much tactical depth, emotional residue, or mutual fixation. These are two nations that know each other’s scars, understand each other’s strengths, and refuse to yield an inch. In many ways the sport’s modern identity has crystallised around this collision – around the two teams who have pushed the game forward more than any other: Ireland with their seamless, detail-rich cohesion, and South Africa with their ability to bend opponents to their will through innovation, physical accuracy and a style that strips the sport back to its most essential truths.

At the heart of all this is Erasmus, the man who built a dynasty from the rubble he found in 2018 yet still feels the cold breath of unfinished business on the back of his neck. He has climbed every mountain in this sport except the one that rises over Dublin’s southside. Until he plants a flag on that slope, the checklist remains incomplete. The Springboks may be world champions, double world champions, architects of the most formidable pressure system the game has seen. But until Erasmus beats Ireland in Ireland, the set is not finished. The itch goes unscratched. The final box stays unticked.