LONG READ Will the Springboks Bomb Squad bomb out before 2027?

If the spirit of South African rugby can be epitomised by a single word, it is the same word repeated thrice by 1906 patriarch Paul Roos in a telegram to the 1937 tourists, on the eve of a historic series win in New Zealand. It said simply “Skrum. Skrum. Skrum.”

That remains the only occasion on which either of the two great nations of the game carried off the spoils on a tour of their biggest rivals in the amateur era. What is more, the Bokke did it with a victory at fortress Eden Park in the decisive third Test, winning 17-6 and by five tries to nil.

The heartbeat of that triumph was the scrum, with South Africa making a statement of intent by opting to take scrum rather than the lineout when the All Blacks kicked the ball out of play for the first time in the game. The Boks had installed an innovative 3-4-1 packing system which overwhelmed the home side, who still operated the old 3-2-3 formation. All Blacks hooker Artie Lambourn reckoned them “a scrummaging machine, very difficult to scrum against. First, they were all big men and strong. Secondly, they all had absolute concentration. We had never come up against such big props before.”

It is the silk thread which unravels through the labyrinth of Springbok rugby history and out into the light of the present day. A pair of outstanding props have always keyed the very best South African teams: the brothers ‘Boy’ and Fanie Louw on that 1937 tour, Chris Koch and Jaap Bekker, Fanie Kuhn and Piet ‘Spiere’ Du Toit, ‘Mof’ Myburgh and Hannes Marais; all the way through to Tendai ‘Beast’ Mtawarira or Steven Kitshoff and Frans Malherbe in the recent reaches of the professional era. There have been other monolithic legends along the way, such as Os du Randt, bookending a stellar career with two triumphs at the 1995 and 2007 World Cups.

Where South Africa innovated with the 3-4-1 formation in 1937, just over 80 years later they were doing it via a bench featuring six and sometimes seven forwards – Rassie Erasmus’ fabled and much-dreaded ‘bomb squad’. It was the bomb squad which navigated the Springboks through some choppy waters at the 2023 World Cup, particularly in the knockout rounds against France and England.

In a Planet Rugby interview, ex-Saracens hooker Schalk Brits recalled the sea change in attitude to the scrum with the appointment of Erasmus as head coach.

“We talked about how scrummaging was part of the DNA of Springbok rugby, and Rassie challenged us to think differently about it.

“We said to him, ‘Well, we can’t scrum for penalties in every scrum’.

“Rassie smiled and replied, ‘Why not? If you’re fit enough and mentally prepared, of course you can. This can be the weapon that differentiates us from the rest.’

“Rassie made us think of complete dominance, of having the mindset of relishing and getting excited for every single opportunity to scrummage.

“He designed the 6-2 split on the bench as a big part of this, and he asked us to no longer think of ourselves as 1,2,3 and 16,17,18 but as two integral units of the team.”

It was a case of building ‘back to the future’ and bringing the best elements of the South African past into a new rugby present. Rassie’s Boks need four props, not two, of roughly equal ability, but presenting varied challenges to the opposition, to make his scrum and bench strategy work. If that explains the depth of world-class props in the current South African squad, the loyalty needed to persevere with the same pool of voorspelers and build the bond they all so clearly share has also created something of a generational logjam come the 2027 World Cup.

Take a look at the following table:

The potential problem for Erasmus is the current generation is expiring at more or less the same time, at least with the World Cup in mind. The titanic Kitshoff is currently recovering from a career-threatening neck injury he says left him ‘two millimetres from death’. There may be a foursome to be constructed out of Nché and Steenekamp on one side of the scrum, and Du Toit and Louw on the other, but depth is beginning to look rather thin, with the youngest of that group 32 at the next global tournament.

Some of those players may not last that long at this level. There were already signs of wear and tear appearing in the latest rounds of the Investec Champions Cup. One of the keys to South Africa’s narrow win over France in the 2023 quarter-final was Nche’s domination of his opposite number Dorian Aldegheri off the pine. Les Bleus were able to match South Africa’s starting props for set-piece quality but slipped in the comparison when the replacements came on. South Africa won the final quarter 10-3 and that made all the difference in a one-point game.

The same story was emphatically not retold when the two met again as starters for the Sharks and Toulouse at the weekend.

The little Ox has deservedly established a reputation as the most destructive scrummaging loosehead in the game, but against Toulouse he found himself playing defence. In the first clip his feet involuntarily leave terra firma as Aldegheri applies the pressure, in the second his hooker Bongi Mbonambi is under such stress he cannot even raise his foot to strike for the ball. It was not a good look for a Sharks 23 containing four Springboks in the front row – Nche, Mbonambi and Koch starting with Trevor Nyakane on the bench.

Things went from bad to worse in the game between the Stormers and Sale Sharks. The immoveable Malherbe has been probably the best pure scrummaging tighthead in the world for the past two World Cup cycles, but he came under unexpected early pressure from Sale’s Bevan Rodd.

Rodd does not have a huge reputation as a scrummager in the English Premiership. It is probably why he lost out to Harlequin Fin Baxter in the contest to replace Joe Marler on England’s July tour of New Zealand, but by the 35^th minute Malherbe had committed his fourth scrum offence and suffered the ignominy of being sin binned.

Malherbe was replaced by Neethling Fouché, and Fouché was able to turn back the tide of refereeing, Canute-like, immediately upon his arrival. That only highlighted the inconvenient truth the big Paarl Boys product may finally be reaching the end of his illustrious career.

Erasmus reached back into one of the deepest and richest pools of Springbok culture, and gave it a distinctively modern twist when he invented the 6-2 and then 7-1 split. He saw the opportunity to flood the bench with tight forwards and create pressure at the scrum which ramped up rather than dwindled towards the end of the game, and it had a decisive say in South Africa’s repeat World Cup triumph.

The challenge now is to replace a faithful band of front row brothers, most of whom are coming to the end of their shelf life at the same time, before the 2027 edition. That task may yet turn out to be the Everest of the Free State maestro’s coaching career. If there is one country who cannot afford their bomb squad to bomb out, it is South Africa.