Thumbgate: The Ireland-South Africa mask has well and truly slipped

Rassie Erasmus has spent the past seven years downplaying the opinions of outsiders. This has been one of his super strengths as Springboks coach. The rest of the world can think what they want about his team. Love them, hate them, it’s all the same to the man at the helm of this evolving dynasty. As long as his players are adored back home, as long as his public hold him in high regard, that is all that matters.
The mask slipped a little at the final whistle of a chaotic game in Dublin. After South Africa pulverised the Irish pack but failed to really rub their noses in it with a 24-13 win – a scoreline that failed to adequately reflect the tempo of the match – Erasmus gave a double thumbs-up to the crowd with what seemed like a mocking smirk.

This is the age we live in. Where hand gestures and curled lips and slightly bared teeth become national talking points. For what it’s worth, Erasmus tried to sidestep the issue, claiming that he was thanking South African supporters just below. Believe him or not, the broader point remains. If the contest between South Africa and Ireland wasn’t previously considered a rivalry it sure as hell is now.

And that, really, is the heart of it.

Erasmus’s thumbs might have been meant for friends or foes or nobody in particular, but what they definitely did was confirm a truth both nations had been tiptoeing around for years: this fixture matters. Maybe South Africans will never rate the Irish as highly as they do the All Blacks. Maybe the Irish will never feel the same antipathy towards the Boks as they do the English. This is almost immaterial. Anyone who has paid attention to the fall-out of what I feel duty-bound to call ‘Thumbgate’ will know that things have ratcheted up.

This game matters in a way it didn’t a decade ago. It matters in the gut, in the psyche, in the identity of two teams that have spent the past cycle jostling for the right to claim they are the premier force in world rugby. They’ve gone about it in different ways, too, and each philosophy underlines certain truths about the sport. Is it better to break teams down with a thousand tiny cuts and an endless wave of clockwork phase play? Or do you stampede over hapless tacklers with an army of rhinos before replacing them with a horde of buffalo? In the myopic world of sports fandom, there is only space for one truth. Anything else is heresy.

For most of rugby’s professional era, this wasn’t even a conversation. South Africa lived in another stratosphere, stacking World Cups while Ireland collected near-misses and measured progress in inches rather than miles. Their paths crossed with polite indifference. No needle, no tension, no sense that the other stood in the way of anything meaningful. But sport has a way of realigning its planets. Ireland’s meticulously engineered rise, sharpened through landmark wins and a system designed to unpick even the heaviest opposition, eventually collided with a Springbok side reforged under Erasmus, rediscovering its bruising DNA while adding layers of calculation and cruelty.

Then Ireland started beating the Boks: 19-16 in Dublin in 2022, 13-8 at the World Cup a year later. A seven-point win for South Africa on home soil was viewed as restorative but a 24-25 loss a week later in Durban underlined a disparity that had started to take shape.

Which is why this latest game was more than just a result. It was a statement. The Boks didn’t just win, they imposed themselves in a way that left a mark not just on Irish bodies but in the collective psyche of everyone involved with Irish rugby. The scrum was a rolling verdict, a hydraulic press squeezing a once-proud Irish set piece until it groaned and then splintered. Ireland, who have spent years convincing the rugby world that precision can trump power, were forced to confront something more elemental. The Boks didn’t outthink them. They out-manned them.

Look at the flashpoints. Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu somehow avoiding a card for a tackle that looked worse with each replay. James Ryan charging in with a reckless, almost frustrated energy that suggested Ireland knew the fight was slipping away. A spate of yellow cards. A penalty try. An endless wave of scrums under Ireland’s poles. These weren’t isolated incidents; they were symptoms of a Test match that had turned primal. Farrell, one of the ultimate alphas of the modern coaching class, the man who has forged a team in his own ferocious image, was effectively left in the corner chair of a hotel room, watching on as his team was dismantled in front of him.

And yet Ireland deserve credit. The way they defended might get drowned in a sea of narrative, but it was nothing short of immense. At one stage they held out the double world champions with only a dozen men. What compelled them? What motivated them to act like Spartans at Thermopylae? Was it devotion to the badge? Was it professional pride? Or was it burning hatred, a sense that no bastard from the southern tip of Africa is going to come to their home and knock over the furniture? Hate can be a strong motivator. Maybe we’ve reached that point in the relationship.

This fixture is no longer an interesting aside on the calendar. It has become a referendum on rugby’s soul. And the truth neither nation will admit out loud is that they need each other now. Ireland needs the Boks to validate the scale of their climb. The Boks need Ireland to remind them they are still being hunted.

So yes, maybe ‘Thumbgate’ was silly, petty, overblown. Maybe Erasmus was waving to someone else entirely. The specifics are irrelevant. The symbolism is not. Because when a stray hand gesture can set two rugby-mad nations frothing, the rivalry has already arrived. And in this one, the hits are getting harder, the margins smaller, the needle sharper. These aren’t just matches anymore. They’re declarations, and neither side is remotely interested in whispering.