This? This was the good stuff.

Ireland went toe to toe with a stacked Springbok pack in the Aviva and came out on top. Not unscathed – that would be even more remarkable – but certainly on top, only just but, to their immense credit, it looks like they have more in the tank for next time. And if this game was brutal, the next time could well be a pyrrhic victory for whoever manages to survive the 80 minutes, win or lose.

It’s hard to parse where this version of Ireland is. We have a Triple Crown to our name since this team properly settled in June 2021 – essentially nothing of note – but we’ve got the kind of scalps in our backpack that suggest talk of winning a World Cup is grounded firmly in reality. In years gone by, we refused to talk about such things because I think we knew that we were subject to the Reverse Candyman effect when it came to the Big One every four years. Say we were going to win the World Cup enough times and it was sure to disappear and leave us holding a large bag of Ls at the quarter-final stage.

This time it feels different. Did this Irish side peak after beating this Springbok side? No, I don’t think so. What this game showed is that when we are presented with a side that has an overwhelming force advantage in the collisions, in the maul and at the scrum, we’re good enough to hang in there and take advantage of a few bounces of the ball. Most sides in the game would wither under the pressure the Springboks exerted in this game so even the luck of the scrum calls going their way and a few other calls getting missed would get ground into a fine powder by the biggest woodchipper in rugby – this Springbok pack.

Did we get a few lucky calls? Yes. Did we ride our luck in the scrum? Yes.

Does that devalue the win? Absolutely not.

This win showed that Ireland can play against a side to which we give up a size differential, hang in there and have enough about us to get the win by hook or by crook. I think even last season Ireland lose this game by 5 points. We showed in this game that we don’t need to blow teams away with a high PPC game by default to get a win because we’ve got an X factor to our game – maybe it’s belief, maybe it’s confidence, maybe it’s that little bit of arrogance that you get when you win a series in New Zealand, regardless of how good the All Blacks are or are not right now.

On its own, this is just another game. We’ve won nothing of substance yet and there are enough question marks coming out of the win on the injury table and on the ref review to stop anyone from getting too much spaghetti in our pockets but I’ll say this – any side that wants to win a World Cup has to win a game like this along the way.

What does that mean in 2023? I guess we’ll see.

***

Andy Farrell made a ballsy adjustment to the Ireland game plan that had worked so well over the last 18 months to take on the Springboks.

Before the game, I spoke about how Ireland would have to make an adjustment to our kicking game to take Kolbe and Arendse out of long kick transitions. We had been a counter-transition team for most of the last two full test seasons where we kicked long, stopped teams with our transition defence and mopped up their exits with strong kick transition work, intelligent kicking of our own or rock-solid lineout/maul work if they exited to touch. If you go back to the really poor 2019/20 spell where Ireland struggled to put anything close to decent performances together game to game, the lineout was the core problem and the addition of Paul O’Connell as the forward coach to replace Simon Easterby ostensibly “fixed it”. With the lineout “fixed” – or at least brought up to code – we could begin burning teams out with our counter transition game on one end while burning them out with a high Pass Per Carry game on the other side of the ball.

Ahead of this game, Ireland were faced with a challenge that South Africa laid out on Tuesday when they named Kurt Lee Arendse and Cheslin Kolbe at fullback. Ireland could continue with the game that we played against, say, England and France in the Six Nations where the vast majority of our kicked metres came from #10 and our back three but that would break the first rule in counter-transition in that it doesn’t work if the guys getting the ball break the first and second tackle.

With Kolbe and Arendse – and even Willemse at #10 – that’s a very good possibility so we actively chose to limit our territory gained by long kicking to take their speed out of the game and punish their height.

We moved away from the counter-transition game knowing that it would mean we’d be playing without the territory buffer we normally do in favour of a tighter box kick/contestable game that we knew would bring the South African scrum into the game and keep their forwards fresher for longer.

Ireland picked our poison, swallowed the whole vial and lived to tell the tale.

In this game, Sexton kick 123 metres total on 22% kicking – basically he kicked 22% of all his possessions – and was on the field for 77 minutes. Conor Murray was on the field for 35 minutes and kicked 81 metres on 10% kicking. The last time we had a scrumhalf play a 10% kicking game was against Wales at the start of the 2021 Six Nations but that was a long kicking game – this was a classic short box kicking game by Murray.

We would have to play in a wardrobe but the Springboks would too – and we backed our defence to stand up to their physicality because offensively, they are no great shakes at the moment from a structural POV.

Essentially, we gave up the territory we normally get from our long kicking game because we believed we could answer the primary challenge when playing the Springboks at the moment which is – can you make your tackles? If you can, they’ll phase-play themselves to a standstill right now. By box kicking short, we essentially hacked a version of the Springboks’ “we’re losing by two scores” playstyle early without dominating the scoreboard.

We kept at that plan even when Murray went off the field. When the winner came, what was the origin? An Irish box kick that pinned Willemse into the left backfield tram line with Ringrose and Baloucone all over him.

Sure, there’s luck here in that Sheehan’s kick of the ball out of the ruck wasn’t picked up live or by the TMO but you earn your luck and we did. A 30m box kick is just far enough for Ringrose and Baloucoune to make a big impact in this moment and much more dangerous in the context of the game than a long, raking 60m boomer from a James Lowe (I know he wasn’t playing but we used him for exits just like these), Johnny Sexton or Hugo Keenan.

You can see here that this box kick caught the Springbok heavy defence slipping on their return up the field and eventually lead to the concession of the try.

When Hendrikse got lost in the ruck, it was always going to be in play and, yes, it should have been a Springboks penalty for the kick but the position was created by smart tactical play from Ireland. That’s the team presentation on a Monday coming through on a Saturday.

Farrell gambled that what we’d see from the Boks on the front foot with positive territory was a very low PPC game and it was – 1.12 across the 80 minutes – so by playing a short off-ball game, Ireland gambled again that we could stand up to an incredibly direct Springbok pack and… we did. Ireland won the turnovers they needed to win at key times but more importantly, we made great stops at key points of the game.

The Springbok attack had no layers, no deception and only one option – a large man trucking it up with another large man on his shoulder to win the ensuing ruck. If you can stop that, you can just about hem them in and we just about did.

Notable Players 

This game was as good as I’ve seen from Garry Ringrose during his test career to date. Sure, he’s good – everyone knows that – but the combination of our tactical approach and his own increased physical output meant this was the perfect game for him. He chased hard, he hit hard and he had the happy knack of putting out fires before they even started. Even better, he managed to stand out while playing outside the impressive Stuart McCloskey but also stepped up to a heavier role as the inside edge defender and walked the debuting Jimmy O’Brien through the game. A World Class defensive performance that earned Ireland the win. ★★★★★

Josh Van Der Flier is probably the best small forward in the game right now. I’m trying to think of someone better, someone more complete when it comes to everything outside of literally jumping in the lineout – which is the only thing Van Der Flier doesn’t do – and I can’t. This guy is a machine. He made 15 tackles, maxed out on his offensive and defensive breakdown arrivals, and showed up with some outstandingly sharp carries into the teeth of the biggest defence in the game all while having the skills and the grit to land one of the toughest maul finishes you’ll ever see right when Ireland needed something big. This guy is an inspiration and regardless of what the awards might say, he’s clearly the World Player of the Year. Outstanding. ★★★★★

Names	Rating
Andrew Porter	★★★★
Dan Sheehan	★★★★
Tadhg Furlong	★★★
Tadhg Beirne	★★★★
James Ryan	★★★★
Peter O'Mahony	★★★★
Josh Van Der Flier	★★★★★
Caelan Doris	★★★★
Conor Murray	★★★
Johnny Sexton	★★★
Mack Hansen	★★★★
Stuart McCloskey	★★★★
Garry Ringrose	★★★★★
Robert Baloucoune	★★★★
Hugo Keenan	★★★★
Rob Herring	★★★
Cian Healy	★★★
Finlay Bealham	★★★★
Kieran Treadwell	★★★
Jack Conan	N/A
Jamison Gibson Park	★★★★
Joey Carbery	N/A
Jimmy O'Brien	★★★