Adnaan Mohamed at Ellis Park
Johannesburg – Ellis Park was supposed to be a fortress. Instead, on Saturday it became a leaking circus tent and the Springboks somehow managed to squeeze in every mistake possible before handing the Wallabies their first ever Rugby Championship win at the ground.
The Boks started like men possessed with fire in the belly and tries on tap. Then suddenly, it was as if someone flipped the switch from “World Champions” to “World Chumps.”
From 22-0 up to 38-22 down. That’s not just a collapse; that’s a rugby implosion worthy of its own Netflix documentary.
Rassie Erasmus didn’t mince his words afterwards. “We were really dog s**t on the day, and they were very good, but we made them better.”
He’s right. This was less about Australia’s brilliance and more about South Africa gift-wrapping them opportunities like it was Christmas in August.
Loose passes, intercepts, turnovers at the breakdown, the Boks looked like a team playing hot potato instead of Test rugby.
At 22-0, Ellis Park was roaring. By full time, it was silent, except for the sound of Aussies pinching themselves.
“They beat us in most departments. We didn’t scrum them, they beat us in the lineouts, and they bullied us at the breakdown after Siya Kolisi went off and Marco van Staden had to go off for an HIA,” Erasmus admitted.
Translation: the Wallabies beat the Boks at their own game and enjoyed doing it.
It wasn’t Joe Schmidt outsmarting South Africa with trick plays. No, this was as simple as standing toe-to-toe and saying: “We’ll push harder, hit harder, stay longer.” And the Boks blinked first.
Erasmus didn’t spare himself either: “We as coaches got it terribly wrong and we have to look at ourselves before we point fingers.”
Admirable honesty, but also damning. If the Boks were a car, the players were the wheels and the coaches, it turns out, were the ones steering into a ditch.
The irony is that there were chances to kill the contest. Grant Williams, Manie Libbok, and Edwill van der Merwe all made line-breaks that could have turned the screw.
Instead, South Africa played like lottery winners chasing a second jackpot.
“Twenty-two-nil is not winning the game,” Erasmus sighed afterwards,
And the worst part? They didn’t even fight for a losing bonus point. “The saddest thing is that they took five points, and we didn’t fight back to take a bonus point. I can butter this up and make excuses, but we were really terrible on the day.”
This wasn’t just a defeat. It was a no-show in the one department the Boks pride themselves on: fight.
“It was a bad loss in a bad way, not against a bad team, and we didn’t have the fight until the end; there was a stage where I felt our heads were dropping and our shoulders were slumping and that bothered.”
And that’s the real worry. Springboks don’t quit. They claw, they bite, they wrestle their way to the final whistle. On Saturday, they looked like they were just going through the motions.
Next up is Cape Town. Originally, the plan was to blood new talent like Ethan Hooker, Canan Moodie, Morne van den Berg. But after this circus, Erasmus hinted at ripping up the script.
“If we don’t play well and we lose momentum and we did both. We might change our thinking.”
For now, the only certainty is that the Boks went from heroes to zeroes in 80 minutes flat. Ellis Park’s aura? Gone.
The Wallabies? Dancing on the rubble. And South Africa? Staring at the mirror, wondering how a fortress turned into a farce.
