LONG READ Is Tony Brown leading South Africa down the wrong path?

When the camera shifted curiously to the coaching booth in a lull at Ellis Park last weekend, the man sitting closest to Springbok Svengali Rassie Erasmus was not another South African. It was a New Zealander, ex-Highlanders and All Blacks 10 Tony Brown. Brown may not be perched on Rassie’s shoulder quite like Jiminy Cricket, but he certainly represents the conscience of South African rugby – whispering the need to run and pass as much as scrum and kick and tackle.

The traumatic 38-22 loss to Australia raised the question of just how far down the All Black yellow brick road the Springboks should travel. Rassie achieved World Cup success by moving South Africa away from the Super Rugby influence in which it was embedded, widening the selection base to include overseas players and shunting the old Super franchises north into the United Rugby Championship. South Africa stopped apologising for its naked physicality and started playing proper Springbok rugby again, and the national team was all the better for it.

After the game, it was as if the South African supremo had woken up from a bad dream.

“This is one of the most embarrassing press conferences I’ve done in a long time,” Erasmus said. “Not just because we were awful… but we didn’t have fight – and that is not what we want to give South Africa.

“It was the same against Italy, we were 27-3 up and then we let teams back in. We had one or two injuries, we gave them one or two soft tries, like the intercept, but overall [the Wallabies] were just better than us in most departments.

“We didn’t scrum them and they beat us in the lineouts. In the first 25 minutes, I thought we were really good in the breakdown. After that, when Siya [Kolisi] got injured and Marco [van Staden] went for an HIA, it slipped away.

“We as coaches got it terribly wrong and we must look firstly at ourselves. We already picked next week’s team, so the players actually know the team, but we had a chat now in the changing room and that will probably change.

“We will have to rethink it. They tactically outsmarted us and also physically dominated us. I can try butter it up and bottle it up to sound cool and respectful, but we were really dogs**t today. The effort was maybe there but the accuracy or precision wasn’t.”

Rassie wants to develop his charges without losing the core components which make the Springboks South African. The following table illustrates just how far the Bokke have travelled in the running/passing game since the 2023 World Cup.

Brown joined the Springbok coaching staff in February 2024, three months after the repeat triumph in Paris, and the figures jump immediately in South Africa’s first major tournament after his arrival. Suddenly the Boks are building another 27 rucks and making an extra 40 passes per game. Against Italy and Georgia in July, the stats took another small step forward: six more rucks and 11 more passes.

But on a fateful Saturday afternoon against the Wallabies, the Boks crossed another threshold entirely. They approached ‘prime Ireland’ attacking stats, topping 100 rucks and making over 200 passes. In fact, the comparison is astonishingly accurate and apposite. The last major tournament won by the men in green was the 2024 Six Nations, and they claimed top spot by averaging 109 rucks and 207 passes per game. So why are the Springboks trying to copy and paste Ireland attacking stats 18 months later?

The Springboks are now essaying almost twice the number of passes they were making at the last World Cup, and they are setting one and half times the number of rucks. It gives the notion of ‘transformation’ an entirely new meaning, and the first game of this year’s Rugby Championship came like a warning shot across the bows. Change may be moving a little too fast for comfort, or even – speak it in a whisper – heading in the wrong direction. Travel to the land of Oz occurred in a tornado, and there were no guarantees about a safe landing.

The key to the new and unaccustomed sense of discomfort can be found in Rassie’s comment that “In the first 25 minutes, I thought we were really good in the breakdown. After that, when Siya [Kolisi] got injured and Marco [van Staden] went for an HIA, it slipped away.’”

The following table illustrates the declining effectiveness of Springbok multi-phase attack by quarters.

In the first 20 minutes, South Africa scored three tries and two of those derived from 4+ phase sequences; but in the remainder of the game the tries dried up and the turnovers from 4+ phase sequences multiplied. There were nine balls surrendered by the end of proceedings, three of which became full penalties to the Wallabies. Coming to this picture for the first time from the outside, the conclusion would be the Springboks lack the tools to sustain their new game-plan for more than 20-25 minutes of peak performance.

Why? When Ireland won their 2024 Six Nations title, they won 107 of the 109 rucks they set, game in and game out. On Saturday, the Boks won 97 rucks but lost five to turnover. The difference to a possession-based attack when the expectation drops from losing one ball in every 55 taken into contact, versus one in every 20, is huge. Losing no more than one ball in every 35 rucks set is the bare minimum to make the formula work.

The Springbok tight five is set up to scrum and dominate the set-piece, whereas Ireland’s is filled with capable all-rounders. The Irish front row which finished the recent series in Australia as Lions starters are on average 10kg per man lighter than their Bokke counterparts for that reason. Whatever credits and debits the comparison may yield at scrum time, the stats in open play [from 2024 Six Nations to Ellis Park] reveal Wilco Louw and Ox Nche only get through 80% of the work done by Andrew Porter and Tadhg Furlong on the carry and at cleanout time.

The difficulties in ball retention are magnified when you are trying to move the ball as wide consistently as South Africa.

The Wallabies were far more compact in their attacking shape and it made their breakdown load a lot easier to bear.

Even though both Wallaby ball-carriers [Harry Wilson in the first example, Fraser McReight in the second] are hit behind the gain line, both are immediately covered by two cleanout supports, with a third ‘safety option’ available if needed. There is no separation in their arrival and that means the jackal has no chance at all, resulting a penalty drawn on Kwagga Smith in the second clip.

Increasing frustration led to a stream of Bokke penalties given up at the ruck – five alone at defensive breakdowns and one more than the Australia conceded in all areas of the game.

The Springbok effort at the breakdown was far more variable in quality and that inconsistency was partly due to the ambition of the attack in wide channels.

On both occasions the Boks make the third pass in attack and that suits a wide-ranging forager such as McReight down to the ground. The first cleanout support has to be very accurate because there will be no immediate assistance from a second player. In the first clip Nche removes the Queenslander with an outstanding knockdown but in the second the open-side keeps his feet and makes the pilfer. He had a second only a few minutes later.

The ball has again moved into the wide 15-5m area and nine Grant Williams is left in a one-on-one contest with the ex-Junior Wallaby skipper, a battle he is never going to win.

The worrying aspect from a Springbok viewpoint is nearly all these failures at breakdown time occurred in the ‘good’ period Rassie identified [minutes one-25], so the red flags were already there.  The truth is South Africa were chancing their arm with the width of ball movement right from the start. That tended to create a succession of one-on-one cleanouts, or separation between the first and second man which became impossible to manage.

Arguably it was also un-South African and it raised an obvious question about a New Zealander’s influence on a Springbok coaching group: is Brown moving the Springboks in a sustainable direction?

On the evidence of the four games the Bokke have played so far in 2025, the answer would have to be no. There are more rucks and more passes than ever before, far more, but they are creating as many opportunities for the opposition as they are for themselves.

When he reviews the game and sees his beloved Boks giving up points for free, the Erasmus may be inclined to shake off the dust, wake up from the dream and muse to himself, ‘Rassie, you’re not in Kansas anymore’. Cape Town will be different, very different.