LONG READ Steven Kitshoff: ‘Every scrum is an opportunity to have a full go at the opposition’

The sweeping history of England v South Africa on a rugby pitch spans 120 years and 47 Test matches. Empires have risen and fallen in the background. The game has gone from leather balls and muddy tours to drones, data and bunker reviews. But the entire dynamic of this relationship can be boiled down to just two scrums.

The first took place five minutes after kick-off in the 2019 World Cup final. The second packed down five minutes from the final whistle in the 2023 World Cup semi-final. Had either set piece gone differently, this story would be different.

In Yokohama, Kyle Sinckler was gone almost before the game had begun, knocked out in an accidental collision and replaced by Dan Cole, who was forced to take on Tendai Mtawarira with the match still blinking into life. What followed has become part of Springbok folklore. The Beast devoured England’s front row as Cole suffered the most torrid 78 minutes ever endured by a Test prop.

Four years later in Paris, England had the Boks wobbling and staring at a shock defeat when Owen Farrell landed a drop-goal to make it 15-6 in his team’s favour. Then, with 20 minutes to go, Ox Nche entered the scene and turned the contest. Three scrum penalties preceded the decisive one, won around halfway, which gave Handré Pollard the opportunity to land the winning kick.

Two scrums. Two World Cups. Two English heartbreaks. Two diverging narratives.

That is not to say the Springboks’ recent superiority over England – six wins from nine matches since Rassie Erasmus took over in 2018 – has been built on scrummaging alone. But it is impossible to separate the rivalry from the set piece that has so often tilted the field.

Since that first meeting in the Erasmus era, South Africa have won 60 of their 68 own scrums against England, an 88.2% success rate. England, by contrast, have won 33 of their 44, at 75%. The penalty count is even more revealing. South Africa have won 23 scrum penalties against England and conceded just 12.

The Springbok scrum is not the force it is because of magic or luck. The secret sauce is a not-so-secret combination of repetition and buy-in.

The picture broadens beyond this fixture. Over this period, South Africa have not merely been the best scrummaging side against England. They have been the best scrummaging side among the elite nations. They rank first for scrum success from their own feed, first for scrums won against the head, first for scrum penalties won per game and first for fewest scrum penalties conceded. The Springboks scrum is not a quirk of this rivalry. It is the most reliable set-piece weapon in the world.

Steven Kitshoff, the former Springbok prop who played in both those seminal matches against England, is keen to strip away some of the mythology behind the South African scrum. Outsiders often talk about genetics. As if props are simply pulled from farms, fed red meat and sent out to move other large men against their will. Kitshoff sees it differently. The Springbok scrum is not the force it is because of magic or luck, he says. The secret sauce is a not-so-secret combination of repetition and buy-in.

“We always talk about having 16 feet on the ground,” he explains. “It’s all about working together as a unit. About having the utmost belief that what we’re doing is important and that it makes a difference.”

Under Daan Human, who replaced Matt Proudfoot as South Africa’s scrum coach after the 2019 World Cup, the language shifted towards what Kitshoff calls “the man in the middle”. Every player, he explains, is asked to scrum through the hooker’s shoulders. The loosehead, tighthead, locks, flankers and No.8 are not eight separate parts. They are one machine driving through one point. As Kitshoff says: “Then it doesn’t matter who you’ve got. Everyone is drilled in the same thing over and over.”

One of the Springboks’ major advantages is that the whole mechanism is made up of replaceable components. Thanks to a rotation policy that opposition coaches have tried to emulate, South Africa’s scrum possesses the two most dominant front rows in the game.

“We often say on a Wednesday, the scrumming session inside the camp is tougher than the weekend’s Test match,” Kitshoff says. “Each scrum is a battle on its own. There’s no surviving or trying to survive. From minute one, first scrum, you’re trying to put your stamp on the game.

“There’s no scrum, channel-one ball, trying to get it in and out. Every scrum is an opportunity to have a full go at the opposition, wear their forwards out, win a penalty, try and win territory. And we want points from each scrum, if possible, or leading to points.”

I hate losing against anyone, but especially I hate losing against England.

Steven Kitshoff

Kitshoff admits that his language around the game has become more open since a neck injury forced his retirement in February last year. As a Springbok, he says, there was always a filter. A loose phrase could become a headline. A stray opinion could be thrown back at the team before a Test. A story told too colourfully could make a team-mate look foolish.

“When you’re playing, you don’t want to say something that’s going to get you in trouble or make you fall out of favour with selection,” Kitshoff says. “That’s probably why you get so little from the Boks [that is not curated by management]. But now, post-career, sharing my stories is what creates opportunities for me outside of the game.”

That freedom also allows Kitshoff to say what current players rarely would about England. “Losing to England just stings a little bit more,” he says. “Luckily we only play them once a year, which creates one big spectacle. I hate losing against anyone, but especially I hate losing against England.”

Some of that feeling, he says, is inherited. Not in a neat or particularly rational way, but through old family stories and the ambient history that clings to white Afrikaans South African identity. “I don’t know anything about the Boer War,” Kitshoff says. “But you hear the stories over and over, and that creates a little bit of hate.” He is quick to shift the point back to rugby. The sting, for him, is also about the matches lost, the celebrations endured and the particular irritation of England enjoying themselves at South Africa’s expense.

Kitshoff’s new openness is part of what has drawn him into podcasting. Before For the Love of Rugby: South Africa, he had dabbled with Game Time, a looser show with his friend, the actor Josh Eady. Then Rob Wadsworth, the producer behind Ben Youngs and Dan Cole’s original For the Love of Rugby, got in touch. The pitch was simple: a South African version, built around Kitshoff and Trevor Nyakane, two Springbok props with shared language, shared scars and enough front-row curiosity to explain what most viewers can only half-see.

And so the scrum becomes more than a way of restarting the game. It is a test of memory, conditioning and nerve. A place where all the talk about South African edge, English pride, Bomb Squad aura and front-row craft is reduced to something brutally simple: who can stay in shape when the force comes through the spine, who can keep driving when the lungs are gone, who can make the other man bend first. “I always loved watching guys break,” Kitshoff says with a slightly wicked tone. “All props will tell you that.”

So watch the fly-halves, the kick-chase, the bench split and the back-three positioning. But watch the first scrum more closely. This rivalry has taken 120 years to build, but lately it has turned on two moments: one five minutes in, one five minutes from the end. There is every chance the next chapter begins in exactly the same place.